Field date set for Inner Mongolia

19 March 2009. IVPP, Beijing.

After several months of sluggish updates of this blog on my part, there is some exciting news: we have set our field date for the 2009 Expedition to Inner Mongolia.

This year's team will include geologists, geochemists, and paleontologists from the United States, China, and Japan. Many of us will be in Beijing on 8 June 2009 to attend a Neogene mammalian biostratigraphy meeting hosted by the IVPP and organized by Dr. Xiaoming Wang of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. After the three-day conference there will be a short field trip to Gansu Province to look at some of the exceptional fossils found in the Hezheng area (see previous entry on this).

Our expedition will begin immediately after these events, and on 16 June 2009 we will launch a caravan of at least four field vehicles and head for central Inner Mongolia. We are going to re-visit fossil localities spanning the Miocene. One of the goals of this 3-week-long expedition will be to excavate two localities in the late Miocene Baogeda Ula strata. I am in the process of finding a good portable jackhammer with which to open up a quarry for easier access to the buried fossils.

Stay tuned...

Jack

A brief excursion to Hong Kong and Macao

10 March 2009. Beijing

I spent much of last week in Hong Kong and Macao reporting and discussing research results from my China stay thus far.

Among the places we visited on our trip were the University of Macao library and the Museo de Macao. On the front wall of the library lobby was a framed excerpt of "Liyundatongpian", an ancient Chinese teaching about the ways of good behavior and rulership of the country.


The Museo de Macao contained artifacts and exhibits on the history of Macao as the commercial interface between China and the western world.


The museum is built on top of a beautiful fortress. We were able to walk in the garden during breaks in the rain.


More on this later.

Jack

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