Meet the family

25 September 2009. Edmonton, AB, Canada,

The field activities of the IVPP-LACM party have officially come to a conclusion in 2009; even though individuals of our team may take trips throughout the world (Dr. Li Qiang is going to visit Russia next month), large-scale expedition will not resume until 2010.

That means all of us are now back in the office and/or laboratory, and thus begins our "other" life as indoor paleontologists. This is the time to reflect and research.

I have an ongoing project examining the skull biomechanics of extinct canids, the group so dear to Dr. Xiaoming Wang's heart (after all, he wrote a whole book about it). After scanning specimens from various museums over the past several years, a decent skull lineup of canid representatives is now ready to be analyzed.

[from left: Hesperocyon gregarius, Mesocyon coryphaeus, Borophagus secundus, Epicyon haydeni, and Canis lupus]

Five skulls of basal (Hesperocyon) to very derived (Borophagus) to modern (Canis) dogs are being analyzed digitally to reveal how their skulls are (or aren't) adapted to bone-cracking. The results will be useful in comparisons with the hyaenids which have extraordinary adaptations for consuming bone.

~Jack

News from the field through the grapevine

19 September 2009. Edmonton, AB Canada

About half-way through the week I received news that our lonely Tibetan Plateau field crew has returned to Beijing.

Because of extraordinary circumstances all coming together this year, the Natural History Museum did not participate in the fieldwork in Zhada Basin, western Tibet. However, the small crew of six discovered a hyaenid palate with lower jaws on the second day after their arrival in Zhada!

After a brief two-week stay in the basin, the crew drove back to Qinghai Province where they did some geologic work on the section we call Quanshuiliang, where all the fossil bovids have been discovered. We hope to be able to put our fossil discoveries into a vertical (stratigraphic) context, so that we may better understand how the animals were evolving locally.

No brand new photos to show from the field because I was not there ;(


~Jack

Thinking about goats

18 September 2009. Edmonton, AB Canada,

Today I finally got my shipment of books from Beijing, after sending them off to sea there in July. The books came about one month later than my shoes and clothes...I wonder if they were "checked" before passing customs. Oh well, at least now I can read articles in paper form and not just on the computer screen.

Doing research in what is now my official "study" in the heart of Edmonton, south of the North Saskatchewan River, I am discovering some fascinating possibilities about the Tibetan Plateau goats Qurliqnoria cheni which I have been examining since my days in Beijing.

[a partial skull of Qurliqnoria cheni from the Qaidam Basin on the Tibetan Plateau, Dr. Xiaoming Wang and Guangpu Xie discovered this specimen last year on our trip.]

Where on Earth did these goats come from? After comparing them to fossil bovids (family of cows, goats, sheep, etc.) from Europe and Africa via published findings, I am taking a guess that these are related to more basal goat-like bovids from the eastern Europe / Middle-Eastern region in the genus Tethytragus.

How nice to have goats and other prey to think about on my breaks from building computer models of vicious dogs and hyenas?

~Jack