Curator

Vertebrate Paleontology

Tunggur Region of Inner Mongolia

Since the Central Asiatic Expeditions led by Roy Chapman Andrews of the American Museum of Natural History (New York) in the 1920-1930s, rich vertebrate fossils from the Tunggur region have become well known in the world. Andrews discovered the Tunggur fossil beds near what he called Wolf Camp, about 50 km to the east of Eren Hot. The Tunggur Formation produced shovel-tusked elephant, Platybelodon grangeri, along with many other mammals, which become the basis of the Tunggurian Land Mammal Age (middle Miocene, around 13-12 million years ago) in Asia. I have started to work in the Tunggur area since 1994, and in collaboration of Drs. Qiu Zhuding and Li Qiang, we have discovered a few new fossil localities that represent different ages in the Miocene and Pliocene. We continue to work in the Tunggur area in order to establish a detailed faunal sequence that will become a standard of comparison for faunas in east Asia.

Acknowledgments: Our fieldwork are funded by the Committee for Research and Exlploration of the National Geographic Society (No. 5527-95), Chinese Academy of Science Outstanding Overseas Scholar Fund (KL205208), and the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation (Nos. 49872011 and 40128004).

	The Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region has several important localities (basins) of Miocene or Pliocene in age. Works in these basins allow us an excellent sense of howe vertebrates evolved during those times. By establishing a series of mammal fauans, we can demonstrate exactly how various mammals evolved through time.
	The shovel-tusked elephant, Platybelodon grangeri Osborn, 1931, is perhaps the best known, certainly the most charismatic, mammal from the Tunggur fauna. The lower tusk to the right is compared to an actual shovel to the left. How this shovel-like tusk was used is still being debated.
	This complete antler of an ancient deer, Stephanocemas thomsoni Colbert, 1936, is another common mammal in the classic Tunggur Formation. This crowned-antlered deer is commonly found in the middle Miocene of Eurasia. See a different species of this deer from Qaidam Basin in Tibetan Plateau.
	This skull of an ancestral hyena, Tungurictis spocki Colbert, 1939, was collected in 1996. It is the size of a fox, much smaller and more primitive than later hyaenids. I described this new material in 2004 (Wang, 2004).
	This series of upper teeth of an another extinct hyena, Hyaenictitherium hyaenoides, is a common species in the late Miocene in Eurasia. This particular specimen was collected from Baogedawula locality in 2000. A paper describing this specimen is published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (Tseng and Wang, 2007).

Collaborating institutions:

- Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (Beijing), Chinese Academy of Sciences.

- Stable Isotope Laboratory, Florida State University (Tallahassee).