Final Dances and Farewells...continued

The Journey Home
Our journey from Camp II began immediately after the rain festival. We drove through the capital of the Alxa district, Alxa Zouqi, where we had the chance to visit another Buddist temple. Now under reconstruction, the historic temple of Nan Se is located in a picturesque valley high in the Helan mountains, between Alxa Zouqi and the Yellow River (Huang He). There we found a lama playing his drum in the soft light inside the temple.

Drums and cymbals are among
the many fascinating objects
inside the Buddist temple of Nan Se.

We followed the winding course of the Yellow River, first north and then east, eventually arriving in Hohhot, our point of departure two months ago. We said our goodbyes - but not before a night on the town at one of the largest discothèques any of us had seen! That's right, a colossal disco in the capitol of Inner Mongolia.

A hot spot in Hohhot, gigantic Club New York, New York keeps the dance floor
hopping all night long.

2001 Expedition to Inner Mongolia: Discoveries
We headed for Beijing with a much better picture of Inner Mongolia's Cretaceous world. There were two main time horizons that we visited, one laid down near the end of the Early Cretaceous and the other at the beginning of the Late Cretaceous, between about 120 and 90 million years ago.

In Early Cretaceous rocks, the team encountered skeletons of the small parrot-beaked psittacosaurs, a larger Iguanodon-like plant-eater, a large meat-eater, and turtles.

Photo by Jeff Wilson
Assembled like a puzzle from more than
20 pieces that lay on the side of a hill,
the skull of a psittacosaur emerges,
the rest safely protected in a jacket.

The swollen woven bone on this rib shaft, compared to that of a normal rib,
marks the site of an ancient injury which this dinosaur survived.

Photo by Paul Sereno
The claw on the hand of this predator was probably 10 inches long in life
with its horny covering.

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