MISSING LINKS AND DAWN MONKEYS
My persistence is rewarded when I split apart another block of greenish-gray limestone. Inside I find a nearly complete maxilla, or upper jaw, of a small rodent, replete with three black teeth that glisten like fresh obsidian in the sunlight. Peering through a hand lens that I keep tied to a leather thong draped like a necklace under my tee shirt, the diagnostic pattern of cusps and crests on the fossilized teeth readily identifies the creature as Pappocricetodon schaubi. A primitive progenitor of modern mice, rats, and gerbils, Pappocricetodon is the most abundant fossil mammal known from this site.1 Though it’s not exactly the pivotal discovery I had hoped for, finding the mortal remains of any animal that lived millions of years ago invigorates the mind. I begin to contemplate the weighty scientific issues that have led me to travel halfway around the world, to this remote part of central China’s Shanxi Province.
My particular area of scientific expertise, vertebrate paleontology, is
in the midst of a sea change. Much of what I learned as a graduate student
is being challenged by provocative new fossils and new methods of
interpreting them, if not discarded altogether. Increasing globalization
and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states have opened
up most of the world to paleontological exploration, including places
that, only a few years earlier, I never dreamed of being able to visit in
search of fossils. On a separate front, molecular biologists are sequencing
the DNA of various organisms at an increasingly frenetic pace, churning
out megabytes of raw data that are being used to test old ideas, and
to propose new ones, about the evolutionary relationships of living plants
and animals. All in all, it feels like a unique moment in history and a
great time to be a paleontologist, especially when you’re involved in one
of the most exciting debates to hit the field of paleoanthropology in many
years.
in the midst of a sea change. Much of what I learned as a graduate student
is being challenged by provocative new fossils and new methods of
interpreting them, if not discarded altogether. Increasing globalization
and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states have opened
up most of the world to paleontological exploration, including places
that, only a few years earlier, I never dreamed of being able to visit in
search of fossils. On a separate front, molecular biologists are sequencing
the DNA of various organisms at an increasingly frenetic pace, churning
out megabytes of raw data that are being used to test old ideas, and
to propose new ones, about the evolutionary relationships of living plants
and animals. All in all, it feels like a unique moment in history and a
great time to be a paleontologist, especially when you’re involved in one
of the most exciting debates to hit the field of paleoanthropology in many
years.
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