The Korea-Mongolia International Dinosaur Project has been collecting fossils from the Gobi Desert for the past several summers, and some of the specimens are housed in the lab in Hwaseong. My visit to Korea is funded through an NSERC Foreign Study Supplement, which is kind of like a study abroad for scientists. The purpose of my visit here is to help prepare a large ankylosaur skeleton, and to get experience working in a different culture and research environment. Continue reading
Research
Hwaseong prep work, day 3
Here’s an example of one of the dinosaur nests found nearby. I like how they show the matrix surrounding the nest. Continue reading
First day at the Hwaseong Dinosaur Lab
After a long journey to Seoul, I have arrived in Hwaseong-si. Here’s a few pictures from my first day at the lab.
I have begun to prepare a tail club.
A week in Warsaw
After last year’s very enjoyable SVP meeting in Bristol, I was able to spend some time at the Paleontological Institute in Warsaw. Mike and I were there to look at Gobi ankylosaurs. The Polish-Mongolian Expeditions in the 1960s and 70s discovered many exciting new taxa of ankylosaurs, including Tarchia and Saichania, and an excellent juvenile Pinacosaurus.
From Russia with Love.
Tetsuto is kind enough to let me post some of his excellent photos from our trip to Russia. Thanks Tetsuto!
Into the Gobi….in Mother Russia.
Guess where I was last week?
Some congratulations are in order!
Congratulations to my fellow ankylosaur researchers Mike Burns and Robin Sissons, who defended their MSc theses this week. Mike studies ankylosaur osteoderms and Robin studies ankylosaur feet.
Last December the three of us published a paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology redescribing and resurrecting Dyoplosaurus, an genus of ankylosaurid that had previously been sunk into Euoplocephalus. Here we are examining the type (and only) specimen in the Royal Ontario Museum’s collections. We are very photogenic. Many thanks are due to David Evans and Brian Iwama who made time to help us during the final phases of the very busy ROM Crystal palaeo gallery reopening!
Dyoplosaurus paper here via BioOne.
Let me introduce you to my little friends.
This blog is set up mostly so I can update friends and family about my summer’s exploits in Korea, China and Mongolia, but I may update with other travel and dinosaur news of interest from time to time.
My research is on the ankylosaurid dinosaurs, the ones with tail clubs, lots of armour, and, one may expect, bad attitudes. I like them because they have the thick skin and surly demeanor that I lack in real life.
Here are some pictures from a paper on tail clubs I published in PLoS One in 2009.
Thus does the blogging commence.
pseudoplocephalus 