First snow of 2009 in the city

17 February 2009. IVPP, Beijing.

A week after the conclusion of the Spring festival and only a few weeks into the year of the ox, Beijing city received a light coat of snow early this morning.

[A frosty dinosaur statue in front of the IVPP.]

[The front walkway to the Paleozoology Museum, with footsteps of morning strollers on the snow.]


[The parking lot on the east side of IVPP, with the student dormitory in the center; my room is the first window on the top floor just above the glass building.]

Research continues as I deal with pending manuscripts and new studies on hyena skulls.

Jack

What is this?

4 January 2009. IVPP, Beijing, China.

As I continue to work on fossils of the Tibetan Plateau, specimens collected from previous field seasons are slowly coming out of the basement storage into the bright lights of the research lab.

I was impressed by the intricate patterns shown on this specimen:


I have intentionally left out the scale bar; would you care to guess what this might be a photo of?

Jack

Study on a giant percrocutid published

22 December 2008, IVPP, Beijing

To wrap up an eventful year and to begin 2009, my study has been conveniently published online this month, and will be in paper form in January 2009:

Tseng ZJ. 2009. Cranial function in a late Miocene Dinocrocuta gigantea (Mammalia: Carnivora) revealed by comparative finite element analysis. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 96:51-67.


If you are *still* interested after reading the abstract, please let me know and I will send you a copy of the study!

Jack