A Conversation with Paul Sereno... I briefly interviewed Paul Sereno this spring about Chinese-American Dinosaur Expedition to Inner Mongolia -Gabrielle Lyon

Q: Over the last decade you’ve led expeditions to Africa, South America, and now you’re headed to Asia. How does this upcoming expedition fit into your overarching research goals?

A: I am exploring the world of Cretaceous dinosaurs because it was a time of great continental movements, when dinosaurs on each continent evolved into new forms in isolation.  There are very unusual dinosaurs to be unearthed in the Gobi desert, some we only know from fragments.  It is these dinosaurs - the last to populate the Asian continent before dinosaurs went extinct - that are most interesting to me in terms of the research project.

Q: What is your primary goal for the expedition to Inner Mongolia?

A: We hope to paint a better picture of life on the great Asian landmass, and make comparisons to the dinosaurs we have just unearthed in Africa.  This will involve looking for large skeletons as well as tiny teeth. During the two-month field season, we will work two field sites and do our best to survey as much territory as possible. The rocks we will explore are Lower Cretaceous, about 100 million years old, and Upper Cretaceous, about 80-70 million years old. These beds hold clues to the last chapter of the dinosaur era.

Q: What will your team be like?

A: The team will be a mix of Americans and Chinese fieldworkers. Our total crew will be about 14 or 15 people. On the American side will be myself, geologist and theropod specialist David Varricchio, paleontologist and sauropod specialist Jeff Wilson, and Gabrielle Lyon, who, along with Dave and Jeff, is a veteran expedition member from African and South American expeditions. In addition to doing fieldwork Gabrielle, with photographer Mike Hettwer, will run the uplink from the field. The team also includes a University of Chicago undergraduate student, Andrew Gray, on his first trip abroad and Fabrice Moreau, a French paleontologist who specializes in fossil fish and microfossil work.

We will be working with Chinese paleontologists from Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia. The lead scientists, Drs. Lin and Zhang will be joined by about 6 others.

The official name of our cooperative partnership is CADE--the Chinese-American Dinosaur Expeditions. The 2001 Expedition to Inner Mongolia is the first in what we anticipate will be a series of expeditions to survey Inner Mongolia from one end to the other.

Q:  How will the environment of the Gobi compare to the Sahara Desert - site of your last expedition?

A: The Gobi Desert looks very little like the Sahara. There is very little loose sand. If anything, the environment is better described as etched badlands and dry grasslands than the sweeping dunes we associate with the Sahara.

Also, the Gobi can be brutally cold - deserts are defined by rainfall, not temperature. So unlike the lanky, but graceful one-humped dromedaries in the Sahara, Gobi camels - called Bactrians - are more stocky and have heavy, shaggy fur. Incidentally, bactrians are easier to ride - between the humps - rather than perched high on the single hump of the camels in Africa.

Q: Are there particular animals you are hoping to learn more about?

A: I really hope to find several unusual dinosaurs.  A primitive duckbill dinosaur called Probactrosaurus was originally found in the late 50's by Russian and Chinese researchers but is very poorly known.  We would learn a lot about the early evolution of the duckbills from a nice skull and skeleton. 

Therizinosauroids are the strangest sloth-like theropods known, but unlike other theropods, they are not meat-eaters! Therizinosauroids have adopted a plant-eating lifestyle, but no one has yet found a complete skeleton.  If we could uncover good material from this group it would be a big find. Ornithomimids, the “ostrich mimic” dinosaurs, are likely to be buried in these deposits and we could learn about the early ones from a good find. 

Finally, sauropods are extremely rare in North America and rare in Asia during the Cretaceous.  If we could make a find, we would know a lot more about what kinds of sauropods survived to the end on Asia. 

And of course, new dinosaurs--anything new!

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