I'm currently reading Michael Novacek's fascinating book Dinosaurs of the Flaming Cliffs, which is about the expeditions led by Novacek into the backcountry of the Mongolian Gobi Desert in search of late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils.
And they found 'em. In abundance. The remains that Novacek's team unearthed changed our understanding of the evolution of dinosaurs and early mammals in central Asia -- I've already lost count of the number of new species his group found, and I'm only about a third of the way through the book.
What struck me, though, is the combination of physical and personal hardship that the team members were willing to tolerate to achieve their goals. The Gobi Desert is, even today, largely untraveled and unmapped; the nomadic groups that live in its arid wastes have to keep moving to survive in a climate that is broiling hot in the summer and viciously cold in the winter, has little in the way of drinkable fresh water, and is thin pasturage for domestic animals even at the best of times. These scientists launched into the arid badlands in old, Soviet-era trucks that broke down every time someone sneezed hard, with carefully-rationed food, water, and gasoline, and exactly zero margin for error.
The fact that they not only survived, but achieved their scientific goals (and then some), is downright astonishing. And every other page, I've shaken my head and thought, "I would never have the courage to do something like this. Not in a million years."
Keep in mind, too, that this is coming from someone who did his share of backcountry camping, mostly in the Cascades and Olympics of Washington State. Being a teacher has its perks -- June, July, and August being top of the list -- and when I was in my twenties I frequently disappeared into the fir-shrouded forests during the summer for weeks at a time. So I'm no stranger to sleeping outdoors and hiking with a heavy pack. (Or at least I was. Now that I am Of A Certain Age, I'm afraid my appreciation of the creature comforts has done nothing but increase.)
But still: I would never have been brave enough to take off into the wilds of Mongolia the way Novacek et al. did (repeatedly). Which probably would have scotched any intent I might have had to become a paleontologist.
On the other hand, sometimes -- admittedly, it's probably rare -- great paleontological discoveries can come from merely opening the right drawer in a museum. The reason the topic comes up (besides my current reading-in-progress) is the chance find by paleontologist Georgios Georgalis of the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow, who was doing some research in London's Natural History Museum and stumbled across the bones of a very unusual fossil snake that had been overlooked for forty years.
Dubbed Paradoxophidion richardoweni -- "Richard Owen's paradoxical snake" -- it lived in England during the Eocene Epoch, something like 37 million years ago. At that point, England was a great deal warmer than it is now. The world was just exiting the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, at eight degrees Celsius higher than today one of the highest global average temperatures ever recorded. The hot times favored diversification of ectothermic animals -- such as snakes -- in what are now regions with much cooler climates.
"It was my childhood dream to be able to visit the Natural History Museum, let alone do research there," said study lead author Georgalis. "So, when I saw these very weird vertebrae in the collection and knew that they were something new, it was a fantastic feeling. It's especially exciting to have described an early diverging caenophidian snake, as there's not that much evidence about how they emerged. Paradoxophidion brings us closer to understanding how this happened."
