2009 Inner Mongolia Expedition confirmed

Great news from Los Angeles:

Jack's 2009 Inner Mongolia Expedition to the hills of Baogeda Ula in the central part of the region has just received enough funding to materialize! He will lead an international crew of paleontologists to explore and excavate the late Miocene rocks of Baogeda Ula, where two new fossil localities were discovered in 2007.

Baogeda Ula [宝格达乌拉]

The American crew will be funded by an Evolving Earth Foundation Research Grant, a National Geographic Society Young Explorers Grant, and a Geological Society of America Student Research Grant. Our Chinese counterparts will also be partially funded by these grants, in addition to a grant from the Chinese Academy of Sciences to Dr. Qiang Li.


Look for the reports of this expedition on this blog next year in 2009!

Explorer's excerpts I: Andrews on fossil prospecting

Below is an excerpt from Roy Chapman Andrews' (American Museum of Natural History) reflection on his expeditions to Outer and Inner Mongolia:

"...I am hardly philosophical enough for a palaeontological collector. Disappointments and successes send me too easily into the blackest depths or to the pinnacle of happiness, and particularly I cannot curb my impatience sufficiently when a specimen has been found. Walter Granger or any of the other trained men are content to work away the matrix around a fossil with a camel's-hair brush, grain by grain, waiting for the specimen to develop as they go down. Theirs is admittedly the proper way to proceed, but pick-and-shovel methods, which at least give quick results, are suited naturally to my restless spirit. Perhaps a complete skeleton or a priceless skull lies below that bit of projecting bone, and I simply cannot wait for days to know. Therefore, whenever one of the men is engaged upon the delicate operation of removing a specimen, the chief palaeontologist issues an ultimatum to the leader of the Expedition: 'Thou shalt not approach this sacred spot unless thy pick is left behind.' "

~On the trail of ancient man (1926), p.213

[this excerpt embodies a common struggle between expedition leaders and crews. How do you know you are working with enough care without being too inefficient? We are often on a time crunch, but still have the goal of extracting intact specimens. Only years of field experience can one master patience and efficiency both.]

The bygone days of nomads and yurts

By request from our friend Judy (who just returned from east Africa and has her own blog of travel stories, among other things), we are posting a few photos of the house of our Mongolian friend who hosted us while we were working in the Dabaishan (Aoerban) area (see previous post).


Many Mongolians in Inner Mongolia no longer live in the traditional yurts of their ancestor's nomadic days. The grasslands are now divided up much like large ranches where their livestocks roam.


Our generous host Bai had a two-room brick house that he and his wife live in. One room composes of the kitchen / bedroom, as they prepare their meals on the bed. The other room is the dining / bedroom, as they eat on the bed as well.


Bai had a side house, which we were not introduced to, by the main house and the outdoor pen for the goats. He takes his goats out for grazing in the early morning, letting them wander over the gently rolling hills before bringing them into the pen in the evening.


The closest thing to yurts we encountered on our travels were the tents used by Tibetan nomads in western Tibet. These are often family-size tents where four, five, or even six people live in as they travel across the landscape.