Right back where we started from

19 October 2008. Los Angeles, California.

At the conclusion of the 68th annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Cleveland, Ohio, the paleontologists of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology are on their way back home to California and Beijing, respectively.

The meeting was composed of four full days of presentations, from the early marine vertebrates to the more recent large Pleistocene mammals. One of the foci of this year's meeting was climate change, including a symposium on biotic changes during the past several million years of Earth's history, and a special forum on the scientific community and the public understanding of global warming.

On another note, we welcomed the new president of the society at the banquet this past Saturday night: Dr. Blaire Van Valkenburgh of the University of California, Los Angeles, a carnivore specialist, is our new fearless leader.

We are now back in Los Angeles, and with a few days to spare, we are preparing our annual field trip to examine the rocks of the late Miocene Dove Spring Formation in Red Rock Canyon State Park, in the western Mojave Desert. Our leading paleontologists are: Drs. David Whistler and Xiaoming Wang, and Mr. Gary Takeuchi.

We hope to see you there!

Jack

Beijing - Los Angeles - Cleveland

13 October 2008. Beijing, China

The annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology is just around the corner. This year the conference is being held in Cleveland, Ohio.


I spent the weekend before the conference hiking and dining with friends from the IVPP and the Fulbright Program.


I have been defeated by the Calorie-packed Chinese food in the past two months; even with daily jogs I have not been able to keep my weight down...what's tasty in Cleveland?


Jack

Tuosu lakers

As I unwrap our new specimens collected this field season and clean them for storage, some fascinating patterns began to emerge:

[washed fossils being dried]

It turns out that we collected specimens representing all three of Birger Bohlin's horned artiodactyls described from the Tuosu Lake area. Two of the species were named after the twin lakes Tuosu and Keluke, and the third after the Olongbuluk Mountain.

[The Tuosu Lake beast, Tosunnoria]

The black and white photo in each set was taken from Bohlin's (1937) original description of these critters.

[The Kelike Lake beast, Qurliqnoria]

[The Olongbuluk Mountain beast, Olongbulukia]

Approximately 33% of the specimens have been unwrapped and boxed; this work will continue to reveal the true extent of our discoveries this year.