I have found my phenotypically equivalent ethnicity!

To say that a lot has happened in the past few days would be a drastic understatement.

I flew past the Tien Shan (天山) mountains to get to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, and stepped into a whole new world. I was welcomed by the cheerful team of researchers that are letting me work with them here at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Quick intro and dinner, and the next day we went into town!

It was a beautiful sunny day. We wandered around the north side of the city to shop for supplies. The equivalent of a hardware store in China is a strip mall of tiny shack-like storefronts along the street. You can get lots of things, but sometimes it's easier to ask the laoban to make something for you if you can't find exactly what you want. This system actually works better for me, who needs really weird and specialized equipment and has someone to translate for me. We ended up getting the x- y- and z- axes calibration object made for me out of metal, and the calibration wand I'm going to make myself with the soldering iron we got for 2 dollars.

Sarah took us to a great Taoist restaurant for lunch that served 4 types of fake meat. It was really amazing that each of them tasted different and had unique textures. At that restaurant it is imperative that you take your leftovers (da bao), because they don't want anything to go to waste. 

After lunch we explored the south end of the city, which is a very Uygur place. Usually when we walk around town we get lots of stares, to which we smile and reply with "Ni hao!." Here they smile at me and say "Yakshmosis!" because they think I'm also Uygur. The architecture is different here- lots of pointed arches everywhere, and everything is intricately decorated. We each got our heal examined by a medicine man. He takes your pulse, looks at your tongue, and squeezes your fingertips to find out what's wrong with you, then sells you the medicine. I would hesitate to do so because there are snakes, bull penises, flayed lizards, deer horns, etc hanging from the ceiling. Kim's friend showed us around and together we had a delicious dinner. I think that being vegetarian is easy in China when you have good friends to help you order.

The next day, one of the professors we are collaborating with took us out to the Przewalski horse breeding center. This species of horse has never been domesticated, and is critically endangered. This center, started in 1985, has been breeding these horses in captivity and releasing them to the wild. They told us that the horses had stables from the beginning, but the humans taking care of them didn't have a house to sleep in until 1995! They look so fuzzy because they're just starting to shed their thick winter coats. These horses have a very stiff mane, and a tail that is more flat like a feather than radially symmetric. We got video of the horses kicking each other and biting each other over food.

Then we made it to Fukang and ate pulled noodles for dinner. Apparently these noodles are unique to Xinjiang. The noodles are made out of a local flour that is different from common flour. Also, the dry climate of the area means that if you take the special flour elsewhere, then it won't stick together in the right way.

That brings us to today. We went shopping for equipment and realized that there are some things that you can't get in normal markets in China even though everything is made here. Plexiglas, rebar, and some PVC pipe joints are impossible to find. Instead we bought a pane of actual glass, wooden stakes, and completely rethought our PVC pipe contraption. Also, the toilet paper here is stretchy and doesn't have a hollow center. The paper goes straight to the middle.

We scoped out the desert in the afternoon and I got my first soil samples and penetrometer readings. Kim showed me what jerboa tracks look like and how they differ from those of the gerbils. She really knows a lot about the ecology of the area, and I'm so glad to have her to learn from. It's surprising that even though it's the desert, there is still so much life.

On the way back to the station we stopped by a Kazakh family's house because we saw baby camels. Little did we know, they also had baby sheep!

I've been learning a lot about China the entire time we've been here. But that's a post for another day. Wan an!

Inventory

Here is a picture of what I'm bringing to the field:

Pocket Penetrometer

Every time people ask me what I'm bringing to the field, I go through my list: "IR lights, IR sensitive cameras, Pocket penetrometer...." And inevitably I get a "Pocket WHAT!?!" or "I'll penetrate YOUR pocket," or "Is that a penetrometer in your pocket or are you happy to see me?"

For all you dirty-minded people out there, a penetrometer tests the surface strength of soil or fruit. You depress it a certain amount, and a calibrated spring inside the penetrometer tells you how much force it took to do so.

I'm hoping to take soil samples and test surface strength of soils where I find different species of jerboas, to determine if different morphologies are associated with different micro-habitats, including the granular properties of the sand.

(Part of the purpose of this post is to see if I can blog photos via email submission)

testing123

Going to China soon, and want to make sure I can update the world while I'm there

No pants, no service.

FAJ was in the arctic with his team. Now when you're a paleontologist working in the arctic, it's just your team out there. The plane and pilot that got you there have left. Sometimes they come back for visits.

FAJ had stepped into some serious mud. He got back to his tent and took off his boots and pants and settled down to take a nap. Suddenly he hears the helicopter and realizes that the pilot has come for a visit. He jumps out of the tent, puts on his boots, and runs out to give the pilot the signal to land. Out of the helicopter comes the pilot, and he introduces a female leader of a museum in the UK to a pantsless FAJ.

Nobody smiles in the arctic. - FAJ

After years of trying to find the correct layer of dirt to dig in, FAJ's team sets up camp. They go out every day in pairs because the cardinal rule of the arctic is that you never let anyone go anywhere alone. Also, you should be armed with a rifle at all times because there are polar bears and they can sneak up on you. One day, all the pairs come back except one. This person comes back alone and has no idea where her partner is. They wait a long time and just as they are about to go out and look for him, he comes back. FAJ prides himself on never having used curse words on campus, but he was an officer in the Marines, so he knows a word or two. He used nearly every word in yelling at that guy because he was so scared that he had been eaten by a polar bear or had frozen to death. The guy sheepishly said he found something interesting. Well he had, and the next day they all went out to where he had found that bone and started digging. Lo and behold, they found a very interesting fossil of a fish with wrist and finger bones. They asked the Inuits what to name it, and they said the name for that fish was Tiktaalik, which is a cod or something that lives up there.

Deinonychus Discovery

Apparently FAJ's wife discovered the very first deinonychus skeleton.  They were out on a dig, and she was using a jackhammer. She was just jackhammering away and didn't realize that there were teeth and bone fragments flying all over the place so FAJ starts yelling for her to stop. And that's how they discovered the deinonychus.