Nomadic Expedition Gobi Trip Photos 4

Ukha Tolgod

Once the remote locality that producued Mononykus and other new dinosaur taxa, Ukha Tolgod is now just one more stop on the tour of the Gobi. Just how productive it is can be evidenced by all the poached quarries in this tiny bit of outcrop.


Phil and crew check out the bits picked up during our hour or so stop. Since it's an AMNH research locality we just looked around but did not collect anything - the poachers had got all the significant material anyways.


Just some of the various types of eggshell seen at the site.


One of the lizards I haven't checked to id yet.


Julia poses at the site of "Big Mama", the oviraptorid + nest.

Aleg Teg

Aleg Teg has been the site of an on-going project to collect and describe new Pinacosaurus material. The locality was worked by the Russians back in the 70's and numerous other crews have been through over the years.

We were more than devastated this year to see that poachers had come and trashed the grid areas that we had excavated last year. On the plus side, we had removed most of the material from these areas so they probably did not get much. We were disheartened enough to abandon our work there for this year.

The tell-tale signs of poaching: empty water and cyanoacrylite bottles, white cotton gloves, and cigarate packages.


We salvaged what we could from the site and moved on....

Hongorin Els (The 'Singing Sands' Dunes)

Jumping out of sequence a bit, here are some photos from the end of trip en route back to the Three Camel Lodge via the Hongrin els dunes. This is a lunch break spot, chosen because of the bushes around that provided a spot for a bathroom break - very important on the overwise flat, barren gobi!


Victoria and Miriam celebrate our arrival at the pass through the dunes.


The soothing sands comfort Nick's head - still recovering from the previous night's wrap-up 'happening'.

Our very own "What, Me Worry" student, Miriam, shows off the bedding planes in the dunes. The Hongorin Els dunes (over 100 km long and probably visible from space) are feed by the erosion of a 10000+ year old dune system on the opposite side of the pass. (Yes, I know els=dunes)

Why Fish Are Different Than People

The amniote primitive streak is defined by epithelial cell intercalation before gastrulation. 2007. O. Voiculescu et al. Nature: published online 10 October 2007.

From the press release:

Embryologists have helped solve an evolutionary riddle that has been puzzling scientists for over a century. They have identified a key mechanism in the initial stages of an embryo’s development that helps differentiate more highly evolved species, including humans, from less evolved species, such as fish.

The Sea Devils © DC Comics

Early on in development, the mass of undifferentiated cells that make up the embryo must take the first steps in deciding how to arrange themselves into component parts to eventually go on to form a fully developed body. This is a process known as ‘gastrulation’. During this stage, the cells group into three layers, the first is the ‘ectoderm’ which then in turn generates the ‘mesoderm’ and ‘endoderm’ layers. In higher vertebrates, such as mammals and birds, the mesoderm and endoderm are generated from an axis running through the centre of the embryo. However, in lower vertebrates, such as amphibians and fish, the two layers are generated around the edge of the embryo.

Using chicken eggs and a state-of-the-art imaging device which can reveal how cells move in three dimensions, the researchers demonstrated a key difference in the way gastrulation occurs between higher vertebrate species and less evolutionarily advanced animals. They discovered that the reason why higher vertebrates form their axis at the midline of the embryo is because during evolution they acquired a new mechanism of “cell intercalation” which positions the axis at the midline. They also discovered the molecules used by the embryo to control these cell movements. In humans this process occurs during week 3 of embryonic development, and forms the cut-off point for scientific research on human embryos in the UK.

Nomadic Expedition Gobi Photos 3

Photo © M. Ryan
This is the most comprehensive group shot that I've got. From left to right: Christie Lucero, Astrid Schelde, Phil Currie, Julia Sankey (behind Phil), Singa, Eva Koppelhus, Nick Longrich (with dog), Miriam Reichel, Victoria Arbour, Mary Anne Wentink, Clive Coy, Susan Owen Kagan, Fukui.


Photo © M. Ryan
Nick makes a friend.


Photo © M. Ryan
A typical view out of the van window. Too bad the gobi was not always this flat!


Photo © M. Ryan
A gas station in Bolgan.


Photo © M. Ryan
The famous pink ger just outside Bolgan.

Specimens in the Paleontological Institute:

Photo © M. Ryan

Tarbosaurus

Photo © M. Ryan

Saurolophus

Photo © M. Ryan

Mononykus

Photo © M. Ryan
The new Mongolian parliament building.


Photo © M. Ryan
Rotating 180° from the above photo you get this view of Ulaanbaatar's city square. The construction cranes in the background indicate the incredible growth and rebuilding that the city is undergoing.

T. rex Footprint?

From BBC News.com:

The metre-square, three-toed track was discovered in the Badlands of Montana, US, in the Hell Creek Formation. The size of the footprint (76cm) suggests that it is a T. rex.

There is one previous claim for a T. rex footprint in the scientific literature. The track was discovered in New Mexico in 1983 and published 11 years later.

Actually, a beautiful T.rex footprint with skin impression was found in Edmonton, Alberta, a number of years ago by Tom Owen and his daughter, and is now in the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology collections in Drumheller.

Update from Darren Tanke (15/10/07): "I was shown a disarticulated tyrannosaur skeleton near Edmonton by the finder; then I showed Tom Owen,who then showed it to Tess, who found the skin impression. There was no ichnite, just a skeleton."

Bill Stout's New Zdenek Burian Sketchbook

I've put up a number of posts on this blog about or featuring the art of my friend Bill Stout. Over the past ten years Bill has pioneered the convention ‘sketchbook’ format now commonly produced by many artists. In addition to sketchbooks of his own work, he has produced three books featuring the mostly unpublished work of Charles Knight, and this year published the first in a planned series on Zdenek Burian.

Bill is a longstanding member of SVP and has produced the logo we’ll be using for next year’s conference here in Cleveland. Bill usually comes to SVP and I’d bet he’d be willing to bring books to Austin to sell to interested buyers.

You can contact Bill or order directly from him on-line through this link.

How We Got Upright

Homeotic Evolution in the Mammalia: Diversification of Therian Axial Seriation and the Morphogenetic Basis of Human Origins. 2007. A. Filler. PLoS ONE 2(10): e1019.

From the press release:

New research reveals evidence of the emergence of the upright human body plan over 15 million years earlier than most experts have believed. More dramatically, the study confirms preliminary evidence that many early hominoid apes were most likely upright bipedal walkers sharing the basic body form of modern humans.

Recent advances in the field of homeotic genetics together with a series of discoveries of hominoid fossils vertebrae now strongly suggest that a specific genetic change that generated the upright bipedal human body form may soon be identified. The various upright “hominiform” hominoids appear to share this morphogenetic innovation with modern humans. Homeotics concerns the embryological assembly program for midline repeating structures such as the human vertebral column and the insect body segments.

Systematic and temporal distribution of homeotic character transitions in mammalian groups (click to enlarge).

The report analyses changes in homeotic embryological assembly of the spine in more than 200 mammalian species across a 250 million year time scale. It identifies a series of modular changes in genetic assembly program that have taken place at the origin point of several major groups of mammals including the newly designated ‘hominiform’ hominoids that share the modern human body plan.

The critical event involves a dramatic embryological change unique to the human lineage that was not previously understood because the unusual human condition was viewed as “normal.”

In most vertebrates (including most mammals), he explains, the dividing plane between the front (ventral) part of the body and the back (dorsal) part is a “horizontal septum” that runs in front of the spinal canal. This is a fundamental aspect of animal architecture. A bizarre birth defect in what may have been the first direct human ancestor led to the “transposition” of the septum to a position behind the spinal cord in the lumbar region. Oddly enough, this configuration is more typical of invertebrates.

The mechanical effect of the transposition was to make horizontal or quadrupedal stance inefficient. “Any mammal with this set of changes would only be comfortable standing upright. I would envision this malformed young hominiform – the first true ancestral human – as standing upright from a young age while its siblings walked around on all fours.”

The earliest example of the transformed hominiform type of lumbar spine is found in Morotopithecus bishopi an extinct hominoid species that lived in Uganda more than 21 million years ago.

“From a number of points of view,” Filler says, “humanity can be redefined as having its origin with Morotopithecus. This greatly demotes the importance of the bipedalism of Australopithecus species such as Lucy Australopithecus afarensis) since we now know of four upright bipedal species that precede her, found from various time periods on out to Morotopithecus in the Early Miocene.”

Suzhousaurus megatherioides

Illo by Mark A. Klingler, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

From the Carnegie Museum press release:

A team of Chinese and American paleontologists have named a new dinosaur: Suzhousaurus megatherioides (“giant sloth-like reptile from Suzhou”) that lived approximately 115 million years ago in what is today Gansu Province in northwestern China. The new dinosaur was formally announced in the Chinese journal Acta Geologica Sinica.

“Suzhousaurus belongs to a strange group of dinosaurs called therizinosaurs, which are characterized by long necks capped by small heads, massive arms tipped with enormous claws, and flaring ribs and hip bones that make their bodies very wide,” said research team member Dr. Matt Lamanna of Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Daqing Li, Dr. Hailu You, and Dr. Jerry Harris were also part of the research team

Therizinosaurs in general range in length from about 2 m (6.6 ft) to 10 m (33 ft) or more. At about 6.5 m (21.5 ft) long, Suzhousaurus is among the largest therizinosaurs known.

In an analysis of the relationships of the animal, the team found that its closest known relative may be a dinosaur called Nothronychus, which has been found only in somewhat younger rocks in New Mexico and Utah.

Also, from the March edition of Acta Geologica Sinica:

Jinfengopteryx Compared to Archaeopteryx, with Comments on the Mosaic Evolution of Long-tailed Avialan Birds. 2007. JI Shu'an and JI Qiang.

Jinfengopteryx is a newly uncovered Archaeopteryx-like avialan bird outside Germany, which was found from the Jehol Biota of northern Hebei in northeastern China. It shares many characters only with Archaeopteryx by the possession of three fenestrae in the antorbital cavity, 23 caudal vertebrae and long tail feathers attached to all the caudal vertebrae.

New Nodosaurid Dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Lishui, Zhejiang Province, China. 2007. Yoichi AZUMA, LU Junchang JIN Xingsheng; SHENG Yiming; LI Yihong; WANG Guoping.

A new genus and species of nodosaurid dinosaur: Zhejiangosaurus lishuiensis gen. et sp. nov. is erected herein. It is characterized by the sacrum consisting of at least three true sacral vertebrae, 5 caudal dorsal vertebrae fused to form the presacral rod, wide divergence of long slender preacetabular process of the ilium from the middle line of the body, and the fourth trochanter located at the femoral mid-length.

The First Stegosaur (Dinosauria, Ornithischia) from the Upper Jurassic Shishugou Formation of Xinjiang, China. 2007. JIA Chengkai; Catherine A. FOSTER; XU Xing and James M. CLARK.

A new stegosaur species, Jiangjunosaurus junggarensis, gen. et sp. nov., is erected based on a specimen collected from the Upper Jurassic upper section of the Shishugou Formation in the Junggar Basin, Xinjiang, China. It represents the first stegosaur from the Jurassic of Xinjiang and increases the diversity of the dinosaur fauna in the Shishugou Formation.

Nomadic Expedition Gobi Trip Photos 2

Some of the canyons of the Nemegt Basin.


While one crew worked on the Oviraptor nest in the torrential rain the rest of stayed dry (after we'd retrieved all the blown away tents) and prepped and packed fossils.


Reopening the 2006 small theropod bone bed.

In the western sayr of the Nemegt Basin we came upon an odd sight – a stacked series of stones. It took us a while to figure out that it was a platform used by poachers to get at the fossils exposed under a ledge. Miriam points to the fossils that must have been too difficult for them get out.


A marker from one of the early Russian expeditions.

Dr. Julia Sankey collects a theropod tooth. Isolated teeth are rare in the Nemegt Fm.


One of the nicer turtles that we collected.


Susan Owen Kagan(lt) with Dr. Badamgarov.


Part of pelvis left behind by poachers who smashed and destroyed a beautiful skeleton just to collect the teeth and claws (just one of the dozens of poached quarries in the Nemegt Basin).


Julia and Nick Longrich work on one of the lizards they collected.


Dr. Eva Koppelhus and Victoria Arbour help pack up camp.


One my goals on this expedition was to collect the remains of a Tarbosaurus from a poached quarry. Although the specimen was smashed, and the skull, hands and feet were missing, much of the rest of the skeleton was there including an articulated series of dorsal vertebrate that were still in situ. Alas, this is what we found - an empty vodka bottle (one of many) in the hole left by the poachers who must have returned and re-poached their own quarry!

Nomadic Expedition Gobi Trip Photos 1

The first of an uncoming batch of photos from my time in the Gobi this past summer. First up, photos from the Nomadic Expeditions trip that I co-lead with Philip Currie from the U of Alberta, and Dr. Badamgarov from the Paleontological Institute in Ulaanbaater:


Our camp in the Late Cretaceous Nemegt Basin. The tall grey tents were all destroyed in a wind and sand strom a few days later.


Sue and Melissa collect a fossil in the Western Sayr [=valley/coulee].


A hadrosaur(?) tibia in the Western Sayr.


Al doles out cheer in our supper ger. Astrid's at the far left and Tom Owen and Phil Currie are to Al's right.


Our guide/coordinator from NE, Singa, helped out at most of our quarries whenever he could. Mary Ann is in the foreground.


The aftrermath of heavy rains that lasted almost 24 hours.


After the rains came the heavy winds that blew many of the tents to the horizon. Miriam and Victoria reinact fighting the winds.


Victoria with one of the many footprints to be found in the basin.

New hadrosaur, Gryposaurus monumentensis

A new species of Gryposaurus (Dinosauria: Hadrosauridae) from the late Campanian Kaiparowits Formation, southern Utah, USA. 2007. T.A. Gates and Ascot Sampson. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 151: 351–376.

Congrats to Bucky and Scott on thier new hadrosaur species (and to Mike Getty and the rest of the crew who also put their collective shoulders to the task!).



From NationalGeographic.com:

The skull was buried in sediments dating to the Late Cretaceous period—about 75 million years ago—in what is now Utahs Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. A team of high school students and volunteers from the Alf Museum in Claremont, California, first discovered the fossil in remote sandstone badlands in 2002.

The fossil was excavated and airlifted by helicopter from the where it was discovered and taken to the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah.

Gates and colleague Scott Sampson studied the skull, and concluded that it is a new species of hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur. The species was given the scientific name Gryposaurus monumentensis in honor of the national monument where the skull was unearthed.

Download the paper for free HERE.

Mass Drowning of Wildebeest In Kenya

Anyone who has worked in large dinosaur bone beds (hands up everyone who’s worked with me in a Centrosaurus bone bed (I can’t see you in back!)) will be very interested in this story:

From Blake de Pastino at National Geographic News:

In a bizarre mishap that conservationists describe as "heartbreaking," an estimated 10,000 wildebeest have drowned while attempting to cross Kenya's Mara River during an annual migration. The deaths, which occurred over the course of several days last week, are said to account for about one percent of the total species population.

The drownings created a grotesque wildlife pileup, after part of the migrating herd tried to ford the Mara at "a particularly treacherous crossing point," according to Terilyn Lemaire, a conservation worker with the Mara Conservancy who witnessed the incident. The first animals into the river failed to cross and drowned, while others continued to stampede into the water behind them, Lemaire told National Geographic News by email.

"Once they jumped into the water, they were unable to climb up either embankment onto land and, as a result, got swept up by the current and drowned," she said.
Some 2,000 wildebeest drowned at the crossing in a single afternoon, Lemaire estimated.

"There was no unusual flooding at the time, and there seems to be no extraneous circumstances to these deaths," she said. "The wildebeest merely chose a crossing point that was too steep."

Drowning deaths are not uncommon during the migration, Lemaire added, but her organization has never witnessed fatalities on this scale.

"It is customary every year for the wildebeest to pick a particularly treacherous crossing point and for there to be a significant die-off," she said, "but the number of deaths during these crossings almost never exceeds one thousand."
The deaths occurred at Kenya's Maasai Mara National Reserve, as the herd was beginning its swing to the east on its way back to the Serengeti.

More than a million wildebeest undertake an epic migration every year in late summer, leaving their calving grounds in the Serengeti Plain of Tanzania to seek greener pastures in Kenya to the north. The animals, also known as gnu, journey some 3,200 km each year, often joined by thousands of zebras and Thomson's gazelles.

The remains formed what she described as "pungent islands of bloated carcasses. The crocodiles, storks, and vultures have not had to worry about where to find their next meal," she wrote.

"Those that aren't consumed will be left and will eventually decompose in the water. These thousands of carcasses will undoubtedly affect the health of the water, but to what extent, only time will tell."

Read Terilyn Lemaire's blog entry with more photos at Mara Conservation

Listen, do you smell that?!

Late Archean Biospheric Oxygenation and Atmospheric Evolution. 2007. Alan J. Kaufman et al. Science 317: 1900-1903.

A Whiff of Oxygen Before the Great Oxidation Event?. 2007. Ariel D. Anbar et al. Science 317: 1903-1906.

From the press release:

Two teams of scientists report that traces of oxygen appeared in Earth’s atmosphere roughly 100 million years before the “Great Oxidation Event” 2.4 billion years ago. The Great Oxidation Event is when most geoscientists think atmospheric oxygen rose sharply from very low levels and set the stage for animal life that followed almost two billion years later.

graphs=real science

Analyzing layers of sedimentary rock in a kilometer-long core sample they retrieved in 2004 from the Hamersley Basin in Western Australia, the researchers found evidence for the presence of a small but significant amount of oxygen 2.5 billion years ago in the oceans and likely also in Earth’s atmosphere.

Because the core was recovered from deep underground, it contains materials untouched by the atmosphere for billions of years.

A cartoon by Tom Bagley, just beacuse I can.

Live Newt at SVP

image

The former U.S. Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, will be speaking on Thursday, October 18, at the Austin Convention Center, from 12:30 to 1:30, during the lunch break on the SVP schedule. His presentation will be entitled:

“Dinosaurs, Birds, and the Challenge of Science in the 21st Century”

Note: I'm on the road this week so expect postings to be light.