May NCFC Meeting
by Craig Tipton
Vice President Jim Supp conducted the May 19th
meeting at the Parma Snow Library which was well
attended by about 35 members and guests. Craig
Tipton, Treasurer, reported a healthy balance in the
club account including the Chitaley Fund. Craig also
gave information out and the trip planners for the
upcoming trip to the Mazon Creek Area on May 26th
to hunt for Mazon Creek concretions. Other items
discussed were the Big One show and the July 10th
anniversary picnic at West Woods in Geauga County.
After the break, the speaker was Dr. Michael Ryan of
the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology at the
Cleveland Museum of Natural History. His talk was
"The Gobi Desert - Uncovering the World's Largest
Dinosaur Graveyard." Dr. Ryan described his
expedition to Mongolia, a country between Russia and
China where the people are slowly trying to learn to run
their own country after the pullout of the Soviet Union
and are becoming somewhat westernized as motorcycles are replacing camels and western dress are becoming more and more common. Dr. Ryan and his small expedition used Russian Made land rover type busses to retrace the steps of the famous paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews who explored the region for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Andrews was famous for the dinosaur discoveries that he made in Mongolia. Dr. Ryan was interested in finding remains of Tarbosaurus, the "Mongolian T-Rex." It is either a very close relative or is identical to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. He collected in the Cretaceous Djadokhta and Baruungoyot formations. He related how the Mongolians did not have the resources to police the paleontological sites and that poachers were coming and taking the claws and teeth from fossils in order to sell them on the black market in China.
One particularly interesting story was about the mass of baby dinosaurs that the Russians had excavated using a bulldozer. On Dr. Ryan's expedition they found many legs and feet still in the ground where the bodies had been scraped off by the bulldozer. However, this deposit is extensive and more complete specimens could be found.
Dr. Ryan concluded his talk with a visit to the flaming cliffs made famous by Roy Chapman Andrews. He quipped that even though the site was becoming a tourist attraction, there were few facilities available for tourists and the area was littered with trash and other things left behind.
