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The
team gathers around the newest
discovery - a partial skeleton
of a bizarre, long-clawed, plant-eating
dinosaur.
(from left, Paul, Gabe, Dave,
Fabrice, Andy)
May 3
10:30pm, Base Camp
Somewhat amazingly
(given the current tension between
the governments in Washington
D.C. and Beijing over the recently
downed Chinese fighter plane),
not only has the local army base
put a bulldozer at our disposal,
we have also been invited onto
the base for showers and a basketball
game.
We've got
a day off scheduled for tomorrow
and the bulldozer is geared up
to come out to the site on May
5 - just enough time for us to
finish the jackets we have already
started at the site. In order
for us to pursue the bone horizon
further into the ground, we need
to move hundreds of tons of rock.
It would be impossible to do it
by hand, but the Army estimates
it will take three days with a
bulldozer.
Given that
the heaviest tool we have used
so far at the site is a pickaxe,
we are nervous about working with
a bulldozer, but excited about
what the fossils the hill may
hold.
For the time
being, however, Paul has turned
his attention away from this site
to two discoveries made by Zhao
earlier today. The two sites are
giving us our first look at dinosaurs
other than the theropods we have
been uncovering.
Paul and other team members are
flipping from research papers
on Asian dinosaurs in the camp's
makeshift library - on fire from
the afternoon's discovery of what
is, perhaps, bones of a therizinosaur.
Gabe
points to the fossil forelimb
of the
Chinese American Dinosaur Expeditions'
logo mascot.
Therizinosaurs are unusual plant-eating
theropods. Paleontologists now
understand that theropods -- once
considered an entirely carnivorous
group that fed only, or at least
mainly, on meat - also include
some herbivorous, exclusively
plant-eating dinosaurs. Therizinosaurs
represent a theropod group that
evolved many specializations for
a plant-eating life. They are
long-armed, and long-clawed, apparently
for reaching and pulling down
branches with foliage, much like
a sloth. At least that is the
best hypothesis we have for the
most evolved, largest, and last
member, Therizinosaurus,
whose nearly straight, thin claws
reach an amazing 3 feet in length!
The earliest members of the group
are preserved in lake bed sediments
in northern China (east of Inner
Mongolia). These quiet deposits
preserved the outline of their
bodies, and it is clear that therizinosaurs,
like several other theropods,
had a body covering of short downy
feathers.
In honor of
this very strange and almost excusively
Asian dinosaur group, the Chinese
American Dinosaur Expedition adopted
the therazinosaur on our logo.
Paul is thrilled that we have
already run into new evidence
of this poorly known group. In
the camp library, he and other
team members pour over papers
on therizinosaurs to compare our
discovery. Is what we found new?
The
Chinese American Dinosaur Expedition
logo as it appears on the team
t-shirts - with ther therizinosaur
mascot proudly in the center.
Within a
few minutes, Paul turns his enthusiasm
to a duck-billed dinosaur - the
second discovery of the afternoon,
and another important addition
to the diversity of the dinosaurs
from this area.
Duck-bills
and their closest relatives are
ornithischian dinosaurs that include
large two-legged plant-eaters
like Iguanodon and hadrosaurs.
They evolved rapidly replacing
teeth, jammed together in tooth
batteries, for grinding plant
matter. These dinosaurs are common
to North America and in some places
in Asia, but until Zhao's find,
the team had found only a single
tooth of this group.
"The
scapula blade is thin and broad.
We can see other bones exposed
in the pit, some belonging to
the back and hand." Paul has a
page open to a series of illustrations
of hadrosaurs bones from previous
papers. "The hand is pretty characteristic,
because some of these plant-eaters
have a large spike-shaped thumb.
And their fingers became adapted
for supporting the body when feeding
low to the ground. You can see
the elongate claws in the ground."
Taking
advantage of the first calm evening
of the field season, Zhao and
Paul stop work to examine a tooth
from a new dinosaur site.
Paul points
to the thin black line drawings
of duckbills found in Asia. Fabrice
and Andy peer overhead. Andy's
hand is in the candy bag and he
eats piece after piece in excitement
as Paul reviews the possibilities.
Have we found a new species? We
are all famished after a day of
hard fieldwork - and our second
day of beautiful weather.
A change
of scenery…
The huge sand storm that hit April
29 blew itself out after two days.
The change of weather has transformed
the landscape. Flat plains are
dotted with sand-caped green scrub;
every wrinkle and ridge of the
black igneous mountains is sharp
against the sky. The red outcrop
is brilliant against the tan and
black hills.
A
tangerine and red sunset is left
in the wake of the huge sandstorm.
Two Bactrian
camels are on the move. Most are
dark brown, with thick fur that
is beginning to shed in anticipation
of summer. Some of the camels
have long shaggy beards and enormously
long eyelashes and some of them
have blonde fur. It is the middle
of the dry season here in Inner
Mongolia and until they consume
water and more vegetation, their
humps are still slack. As a result,
there are an unending variety
of humps. A few have two upright
humps, but most have at one hump
thin and slumped over, and many
of them have one flopped to the
right and one to the left.
The camels'
dark silhouettes are visible for
miles against the horizon as they
bend their great hanging necks,
looking for plants. We could see
forever, if only our eyes would
let us.
A
bactrian camel with one of its
two humps flopped towards the
camera.
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