Jack Tseng and Camille Grohe, postdoctoral fellows in the Division of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, are blogging from the field during an expedition to Inner Mongolia.
© J. Tseng
Jack Tseng: On August 13, following a 14-hour plane ride from New York City, we arrived at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, our assembly point before our two-week expedition into the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
As it happens, there are two separate regions with the name “Mongolia.” Inner Mongolia, where we are, is located in northern China. The region borders nine other provinces or autonomous regions in China to the east, south, and west. To the north, the Inner Mongolia region shares more than 1,000 miles of international border with the independent nation called Mongolia (or “outer Mongolia,” as some locals call it).
Imagery ©2014 TerraMetrics, Map data ©2014 AutoNavi, Google, SK planet, ZENRIN
Inner Mongolia also shares a sizable chunk of the Gobi Desert with Mongolia, where the famous Central Asiatic Expeditions launched by the American Museum of Natural History in the 1920s were held. It was in the Mongolian Gobi that plentiful nests and incredibly well-preserved skeletons of dinosaurs were first uncovered by expedition leader Roy Chapman Andrews and his team of explorers. But one could say that the incredible fossils discovered on this expedition likely would not have made it to New York City if not for the corridors of drivable grasslands and desert landscape of Inner Mongolia.
©AMNH/410730 Digital Special Collections
©AMNH/410763 Digital Special Collections
Being a land-locked country, early-20th-century Mongolia was not an easy place to transport supplies to, or to extract fossils from. Through arrangements made between the expedition leaders and the Chinese government, all the Museum’s supplies were unloaded at Chinese ports and housed in Beijing.
In order to reach uncharted territories deep in the Gobi, the expedition vehicles drove northward from Beijing, passing the Great Wall and the city of Kalgan (now known as Zhangjiakou) on an arterial road leading from the lower plains up onto the Mongolian plateau. From there, the area known today as Inner Mongolia provided them with trails and open terrain to push northwest into the heart of the Gobi Desert. All their discoveries had to be transported back to China and shipped from a Chinese port, eventually reaching the west coast of the United States.
© J. Tseng
Since 1990, the Museum has continued its exploration of the Mongolian Gobi through summer expeditions led by Division of Paleontology Curators Mark Norell and Mike Novacek. Modern aviation has allowed these expedition teams to assemble and head out to the field from the capitol of Mongolia, Ulan Bator, but our Inner Mongolia expeditions still trace some of the original routes from the 1920s trips. The different routes taken by the Museum’s Gobi and Inner Mongolia expeditions are not solely a matter of political boundaries, but also of geologic ones: the older, dinosaur-producing rocks are best exposed in the Mongolian Gobi, whereas the younger, mostly mammal-producing rocks are further east, within the boundaries of Inner Mongolia. It’s from these latter rocks that we’ll be searching with our colleagues from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology for extinct mammals that lived between 20 to six million years ago. We hope to be able to share some of our adventures with you along the way.
A Day in the Life of a Paleontologist
© J. Tseng
Jack Tseng: A typical day in Inner Mongolia begins with a hearty breakfast—unlike elsewhere in China, the proximity of towns and cities to large sheep ranches here guarantees a feast of freshly boiled sheep parts at the crack of dawn, usually accompanied by sheep cheese and milk tea. The guilt of such a high-calorie intake is enough to motivate a lazy hiker to prospect vigorously for fossils later on. Luckily, the vast grasslands and rock exposures offer plenty of space to burn off the fat (yes, literally the sheep fat we just consumed).
© J. Tseng
Whatever food is left over from breakfast is usually divided up among the expedition members to be taken in our individual packs as lunch. This saves time as our unpredictable fossil-hunting schedule does not always allow for reassembly at lunchtime. Before we leave each “base camp” town, we also make sure we have enough water (both potable and non-potable) to drink and to make plaster casings with, in case we find something worth excavating. Then we head out in our four-wheel drives.
© J. Tseng
About half of our usual stops in the Inner Mongolian Gobi represent previously known localities either from our own expeditions, or from another era (such as those discovered during the Museum’s Central Asiatic Expeditions). As inquisitive field paleontologists, we are always looking for new places to uncover new fossils, but a seasoned field worker never overlooks the importance of going back to known sites. Why? Even at the most surveyed fossil sites, nature works its wonder through wind, rain, snow, and tectonic activities. Existing rock layers at the surface (where most of previous fossil discoveries are located) are slowly weathered away each year, exposing fresh surfaces that have not been studied before. By a bit of diligence and a whole lot of luck, sometimes we can catch a glimpse of a fossil with just its tip exposed on the surface, indicating the potential to find the rest of it (be it a single bone or parts of a skeleton) just beneath the ground. The less the fossil is exposed through weathering (but exposed enough for us to locate in the first place), the more likely we can find complete bones within the rock.
© J. Tseng
We arrive at a fossil site via the help of GPS and geologic and satellite maps. After agreeing upon a time to meet back at the vehicles, we fan out in search of bones. A typical daypack includes water, food, plaster bandages, rock hammer, a GPS unit, field notebook, plastic bags (for sorting fossils from different localities), acrylic consolidant and glue (for stabilizing fragile fossils), brush, dental pick, awl, binoculars (for surveying rock outcrops in the distance, or for bird-watching when no other paleontologists are around!).
© J. Tseng
For the most part, our day is filled with blessed solitude in the Gobi. The loudest sounds we hear are either our footsteps crunching over the hot, pebbly hills, an occasional dust devil (a small area of rapidly spinning wind that contains sand or dust), or a herd of sheep. This is not only a time to find new and exciting fossils, but also to reflect upon our own scientific journey during the rest of the year, when months of indoor research in front of a computer—and in the middle of the urban jungle that is NYC—numb your senses, and distance the fossils you study from their primary context in the ancient rocks of some of the most desolate landscapes that remain on Earth.
© J. Tseng
The end of the day is a time of celebration. The expedition members, no matter whether they are a professor or a starry-eyed undergraduate student, gather around in a kindergarten-style show-and-tell. This is often the most emotional time of the expedition: the excitement of seeing new and unknown fossils, the disappointment of not having the best find of the day. But that's okay, it starts over again tomorrow!
Inner Mongolia, Now and Then
Camille Grohe: From 1921 to 1930, the Central Asiatic Expedition led by Museum paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews made good on its promise to provide exciting new discoveries on the geological history of Northern China and Mongolia. Among the most famous fossils excavated are the first Mongolian dinosaur nests, and from Inner Mongolia, gigantic fossil mammals such as Andrewsarchus mongoliensis, the largest meat-eating land mammal that ever lived.
© Mick Ellison
On this trip, we’re lucky to have the chance to explore some of the same areas as the Andrews team, in particular, the Tunggur tableland, a formation in central Inner Mongolia that is one of the richest sites for mammalian fossils from the middle Miocene (about 16 to 11.5 million years ago).
©AMNH/410926 Digital Special Collections
The Central Asiatic Expedition provided the first insight into the amazing paleontological potential of Inner Mongolia, with a total of 28 species of mammals discovered. Among them were Platybelodon, a peculiar shovel-tusked mastodon; fossil deer; giraffes; antelopes; pigs; rhinos; bears; hyenas; big cats; rodents; rabbits; and the large herbivorous ungulate Chalicotherium, which is closely related to modern horses, rhinos, and tapirs.
©AMNH/C. Grohé
But because of wars and political instability, only one brief expedition went back to the area over a span of about 60 years following the Central Asiatic Expedition discoveries. It wasn’t until the end of the 1980s that researchers regularly returned to the area through the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP). One of the successive teams, led by Qiu Zhuding and Li Qiang, and joined by Xiaoming Wang—now a curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and a co-leader, with Jack, of our current expedition—has done an amazing job of finding the historical localities of the Central Asiatic Expedition from photos and original descriptions. During that earlier expedition, sediment from the Tunggur was also screen washed for the first time. This technique, which is used to search for tiny fossils such as teeth and bone fragments, has permitted the description of many small fossil mammals such as hedgehogs, jerboas, picas, beavers, and bats.
©AMNH/411020 Digital Special Collections (top)©AMNH/C. Grohé
Jack was part of four previous IVPP expeditions in Inner Mongolia, including one focusing on excavations at Baogeda Ula, a Late Miocene locality (about 11.5 to 5 million years old) located on the northeastern border of the Tunggur tableland. This is my first time in China—but we both are very excited about this new expedition. In addition to Xiaoming, Jack, and myself, our expedition team includes Wenqing Feng from the IVPP and Hongjiang Wang from the local cultural institution of Xilinhot (in Inner Mongolia). After a first stop at Xilinhot, about a 10-hour drive north from Beijing, we are going back to the Tunggur tableland, to the northeast at Baogeda Ula, and to the south at Dahongshan.
©AMNH/C. Grohé
We expect to find new specimens that will help us understand the evolution of animals in Asia about 20 to 5 million years ago. For example, we are interested in mammal migration events between China and North America during this period as well as the evolution of the past environments in northern China while the planet underwent a global climate drying, or aridification.
©AMNH/410962 Digital Special Collections
We just use one car for our expedition, in contrast to the Central Asiatic Expedition, which used hundreds of camels for the transportation of gas, along with many cars. And even though this region is quite isolated, there have been some environmental changes over the past 80-plus years. One area we will visit was called “Wolf Camp” by the Andrews team because of the overwhelming number of wolves that called it home. But today, after years of hunting, there are no wolves to be seen. Recent drought has also made Tunggur drier, with fewer flowers, and new mining operations and the building of ranch fences are altering the general landscape.
We've Got Friends in Faraway Places
Jack Tseng: A Chinese poet of Mongolian descent once described the longing for her ancestral Inner Mongolian homeland as “the grasslands of her father, and the rivers of her mother.” Many of us on the expeditions share a similar yearning for the fossil-producing regions here in Inner Mongolia that we visit year after year. One team member’s doctoral dissertation research was focused on a single site in Inner Mongolia; another’s entire career has been made on discoveries there during the past three decades. Beyond the scientific importance of the specific sites themselves, part of our fondness for Inner Mongolia comes from the long-lasting friendships we make with the local ranchers and museum staff.
©AMNH/C. Grohé
Among our Inner Mongolian friends, two stand out. One is a rancher, Laowu Bai, known as Bai, the other, a self-taught naturalist named Haifeng Chen, who we call Director Chen. Bai has a sheep herd of more than 100 animals, and his ranch sits on a hill overlooking a spectacular stretch of geologic exposure known to locals as Dahongshan (“big red mountain” in Chinese). Whenever we visit Dahongshan to search for its characteristic early to middle Miocene small mammal fossils, we camp out on Bai’s ranch. Bai lives with his wife and son, who attends school in the nearest town of Sunite Left Banner (accessible by a two-hour motorcycle ride). He always welcomes us with a warm smile and a strong embrace. In 2008, we had the honor of being there during the same week as his son’s first haircut (“Daah' Urgeeh” in Mongolian), a very important ceremony for Mongolian children. Two of our expedition leaders were guests of honor at the ceremony. When we left Bai’s ranch that year, he slaughtered a sheep to host a lunchtime feast for us, and, in fact, wept, as we drove off into the distance. Because of drought, Bai recently moved into Sunite Left Banner and left his brother-in-law behind to look after his sheep. Other nearby ranchers are not so lucky, and must remain with their herd through the tough times.
©AMNH/J. Tseng
Our other good friend, Director Chen, enjoys exploring the hills of his home turf, Abaga Banner, looking for fossils. In 2010, he became the director of the Abaga Banner’s Cultural and Natural History Museum, which displays artifacts and specimens from the area. Because of Director Chen’s generosity, the newly built Abaga Museum has become our base camp while we prospect the nearby late Miocene rocks for small and large mammal fossils. Beyond the mandatory feasts he holds each year to welcome us once again, he accompanies us on our fossil-prospecting runs. In fact, he is a key part of our work in Abaga, because he often finds new fossil localities, and then leads us there to investigate them. Enthusiasts like Director Chen are so critical in our work because people like him know and love the Gobi around them. They also live year-round in the area, making any discovery of freshly exposed fossils much more likely than during our short month-long expeditions.
©AMNH/J. Tseng
Unfortunately, Gobi fossils have become attractive to smugglers, and there has recently been a rise in black-market trade in these scientifically valuable finds. During one of our own expeditions, we left a large plaster-covered block containing late Miocene mammal fossils at the site of discovery for a later time, because it was too large to move with our available equipment. When we returned several months later to retrieve the block, we found that it had been hacked into pieces, with large portions missing. Local police never solved the case, but they suggested that it could be related to the known illegal trade of fossils and cultural artifacts in the area.
©G. Takeuchi, Page Museum of Rancho La Brea Discoveries
Back Home
Jack Tseng: Now that Camille and I are back in New York City, we’ve been going over the fruits of our labor from our two and a half weeks in Inner Mongolia. Here is a rundown of what we think were the most significant discoveries we made during the trip.
©AMNH/C. Grohé
- A better representation of the extinct mammal community that lived in Dahongshan about 16–19 million years ago, based on the teeth we found there of extinct deer, weasel, rats, and squirrels. More importantly, we think we’ve collected the first known teeth of chalicotheres (large, hoofed herbivores related to rhinos and horses) and beardogs (a group of enigmatic carnivores whose position on the carnivore family tree is still being studied) from the red beds, so called for their distinctive soil color. This rounding-out of our understanding of Dahongshan was surely worth the three days we spent in these scorching 104° F badlands.
© AMNH/J. Tseng
- A collection of fossils representing six groups of mammals from a site previously unknown to expeditions either from the United States or from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Key findings in the river valley of Wuliyasitai include partial jaws of several individuals of an extinct rhino species preserved in close proximity, and (much to my delight) two partial lower jaws of the wolf-like extinct hyena Hyaenictitherium. The hyena discovery helps to pin down the rough geologic age of this new fossil deposit because Hyaenictitherium went extinct in much of Eurasia during the early Pliocene (between 5.3 and 3.6 million years ago).
©AMNH/J. Tseng
- Connections made to the Museum’s Central Asiatic Expeditions in the Tunggur tablelands, including visits to the classic fossil localities of Wolf Camp, Platybelodon Camp, and Mandelin Chabu (where the Museum’s Roy Chapman Andrews and his team first discovered fossils in central Inner Mongolia). During our 2014 visit, we even collected a headstamp from a shotgun shell that was in production in the U.S. from 1924–1930, so likely to have been left there from either Andrews’ 1928 or 1929 Central Asiatic Expedition to Tunggur.
©AMNH/J. Tseng
Laboratory research into some of our new field discoveries is now starting in New York and Beijing. We hope the new specimens will keep us busy until our next expedition to Inner Mongolia in 2015!
This expedition was funded by the American Museum of Natural History and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Additional support for this work was provided by the Franco-American Fulbright Scholar program, the AMNH Frick Fund (Paleontology), and the U.S. National Science Foundation.