Tracking Cretaceous Birds in South Korea: Goseong Public Library Talks

Hello, Dear Readers!

We've made it to September 16, 2017, when our Ichnology Heros are scheduled to give talks to the public at the Goseong Public Library! When we go to another country to do research, we always offer to give a local talk on the work we do in Canada, and how the local fossil record fits in with our work on a global scale.

Giving a talk in another country where the language is not your primary language is not that different (in my experience) than tailoring an academic talk to a public audience:

1. Keep the jargon to a minimum. There's always a way to explain even a highly technical test or feature using non-technical language.

2. You may understand your graphs, but remember: you've been staring at them for months or years. No blob of ambiguous data points on a graph with itty-bitty axes, no series of fifty graphs that only have really subtle differences. If you use graphs, make sure the meaning of the graph is crystal clear.

3. Pictures are worth a thousand words. If you can describe it, see if you can also show it. Outline hard to see details for your audience. If you're showing a picture of a single bone or a footprint, also show an image of the animal it came from (or the closest representative).

4. Remember - especially when your audience is in another country - that jokes/witticisms are often colloquial and have local or specialized meaning. it may fall flat. Also, "those jokes" (which are really just methods used to belittle groups who have less representation and/or power) about gender, race, jokes about sex, sexual innuendos, or sexual imagery, or jokes about political situations are in really poor taste, no matter your audience. They have no place in a talk communicating science to any audience. No one wants to see that nonsense.

5. If a translation is necessary, remember that this will (at least) double the time it takes to give your talk. Make sure you are not talking in huge paragraphs: your translator is going to have to remember what you've said and be forced to summarize your long rambling monologue to a more concise sentence or two.

We were told ahead of time that the audience would be a mix of children and adults, so I made sure to travel with my Bird Glamour makeup kit! I don't often have an opportunity to do a Bird Glamour for an extinct species of bird or avian theropod (although I did rock Anchiornis at the 2017 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting during the auction/social event!) I was excited to do an ichnology-themed Bird Glamour.

This ichnology Bird Glamour was inspired by Ignotornis gajinensis, the bird trackways that have spoonbill-like "swooshes" preserved. These "swooshes" are similar in shape to the bill marks made on sediment by present-day spoonbills stirring up the sediment to catch fish and invertebrates.

Spoonbill with its namesake spoon-shaped bill.

I decided to go with the Black-faced Spoonbill for this Bird Glamour. We arrived at the Goseong Public Library after a nice lunch with the Library's curator, public programming coordinator, and some of the Library staff.

The poster advertising our public talks at the Goseong Public Library!

While the rest of the Ichnology Team had coffee and snacks with the curator, I applied my Black-faced Spoonbill look.

These looks can take anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour to create. Once I was done, Sujin asked if I could do her eyes up as an owl. Sujin chose a Long-eared Owl, and I was kindly given the use of the curator's office to apply Sujin's Long-eared Owl look.

Me (left) with Black-faced Spoonbill eyes and Sujin (right) with Long-eared Owl eyes. 

This was the first time I had given a public talk while wearing Bird Glamour. I admit to being a trifle nervous about it: people sometimes have a very specific stereotype image in mind when they think "scientist," and that image does not typically involve makeup, let alone bird-inspired makeup. Nevertheless, I opened my talk by introducing Bird Glamour and used the link between the Black-faced Spoonbill and Korea's fossil bird tracks to talk about the bird tracks of western Canada.

Dr. Martin Lockley talking about his track work in South Korea.

Dr. Richard McCrea talking about dinosaur tracks from western Canada.

The talks were very well-received: there were a lot of interesting questions from both the kids and adults in attendance. We went out for our last dinner in South Korea: bulgogi! After dinner, we went to Dr. Kim's lab for one last push to get as many tracks documented in our time remaining. We were at the lab until at least 11:00 pm local time.

Our flight from the Incheon Airport wasn't until the early afternoon, but we were scheduled to take a bus from Jinju to Incheon. The bus was scheduled to leave Jinju around 5:45 am. We were up, packed, and waiting in the hotel parking garage for our ride to the bus station at 5:10 am.

Things got...interesting. We saw some of the Jinju night-life as young people started returning home from what I assume was a fun Saturday night. Then a young woman staggers down the road. She is still in a partying mood and is very eager to give us cigarettes. She tells us in her limited English that she is from Russia, and that she doesn't speak [insert derogatory term here]. To directly quote my field notes from that morning "Charming that one of the few English words she knows is a slur. :| " While this interaction was taking place, I was scanning down the road to make sure that she was not distracting us so that an unseen companion could rob us. Before long Sujin arrived with an additional cab to take us and our luggage to the bus station. Rich gave his gift of cigarettes to our cab driver.

We arrived with plenty of time to get our boarding passes for the bus. These buses are glorious: truly comfortable seats with nice headrests and copious leg room. We slept until our rest stop about halfway between Jinju and Incheon Airport. We breakfasted on roasted chestnuts purchased at the concession. If you've never had roasted chestnuts, they have a soft texture that is slightly sweet.

Since all of the buses look the same, we made sure to remember in which space our bus was parked. 

We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. This was good because it gave us a chance to repack our bags to make sure we didn't have power sources, like a solar battery charger, in our carry-on luggage. We found this out when Martin (who was flying out of Incheon first) was pulled out of line during his bag scanning to repack his bags. Oops. You can travel a million times and still miss an item or two.

Our flight back to Canada was uneventful, which is the best kind of flight! Usually, on a flight and while waiting in airports I type away on writing projects and papers. Sometimes I try to read if the jetlag isn't too powerful. I felt the jetlag start to hit me hard while we were waiting for our flight from Vancouver to Fort St. John. Jetlag gives me a very disconnected feeling: I feel as though I'm moving at a different tempo than that of the rest of the world. I also tend to feel as though all of my sensations have been muted.

Then, of course, there's the struggle to reclaim your original sleep schedule. This can take anywhere from a couple of days to over a week. My advice: don't try to do a hard reset on your sleep schedule. Day Three after we had arrived home, we forced ourselves into a "normal" day by doing a day trip into another community. We were out of the house at 9:00 am and in bed around 11:30 pm. The next thing we knew, we were waking up the next day at 3:45 pm. Just let the jet lag run its course.

That is the end of our tracking adventure in South Korea! Now we have several scientific papers to write on all of the data we collected! Hopefully, I'll be able to give you updates on those papers soon!

Tracking Cretaceous Birds in South Korea: Gajin-ri Site

Hello, Dear Readers! I'm back! Well, sort of back. I have been down and out with that nasty flu that is going around. It's a bad one. Friends, if you happen to catch it, please please please take the time to get the rest you need to recover. I've taken the time off that I need, and darn if I don't feel the least bit guilty about it.

We last left our intrepid ichnology adventurers enjoying a lunch of mul-naengmyeon. Here our party split up. Martin went back to Dr. Kim Kyung-soo's lab at Chinju University with Sujin to continue collecting data, making latex peels, and tracings of track slabs on to plastic sheets. Rich and I accompanied Dr. Kim to the Fossil Heritage Hall of the Gyeongsangnam-do Institute of Science Education. We were here to see the famous Early Cretaceous Gajin-ri track site. This site was written up scientifically by Kim Jeong-yul and coauthors in 2012 (Dr. Kim Kyung-soo was one of the authors), and it is famous for two main reasons. One, there are SO MANY BIRD TRACKS, with an estimated 600 bird tracks per square meter!

Figure 3 from Kim et al. (2012). Each one of those marks is an individual bird footprint. This is glorious.

Second, the Gajin-ri site is where Ignotornis gajinensis was found! This is a bird track type has the classic Ignotornis look - three forward-pointing toes with webbing in-between them, one long reversed toe (hallux) - but it also has bill scrape marks!

Tracks of Ignotornis gajinensis, with the bill scrape marks. I like to call them swooshes!

These bill scrape marks are very close in shape to those of modern-day spoonbills. Spoonbills get their name from their spoon-shaped bill, which they use to search for food by swooshing their bills through the water and the underwater sediment, stirring up fish and invertebrates.

I love this image of a Eurasian Spoonbill for two reasons: a great view of the bill, and its showing off its foot.

This site is one of many sites in the Republic of Korea that has been designated a Natural Monument (No. 395), but an entire center was built over the site to offer top-notch science outreach and education. I need to show you how wonderful this center is: this is what I dream of happening in northeastern British Columbia.

First, here's entrance sign. Do you see the bird tracks on the sign?

There are three different bird track types on this sign, including the iconic Ignotornis gajinensis and the bill swooshes!

 Once we were in the Center, we immediately saw a sign for Ignotornis gajinensis!

We were eager to see the track surface, which the Center set up so that visitors can walk around the entire exposed surface at an upper and a lower level.

The lower level allows visitors to get up close and personal with the track surface.

There are several track types on this surface, displaying a whole track ecosystem from the Early Cretaceous Period. Here is one of the sauropod trackways.

Sauropod trackway walking towards me.

Small (left) and large (right) sauropod trackways.

You'll notice how dark the pictures are. It seems counter-intuitive that a dark room is the best way to see dinosaur and bird footprints, but it really is. Bright, direct lights wash out all of the details, while a dark room with a low angle light shining over the surface makes the details pop.

Here is the trackway of a small non-avian theropod, walking among the trackways of sauropods and birds.

Birds, theropods, and sauropods, oh my!

If you look at the upper left-hand corner of the above picture, you'll see my shoes. We got to crawl all over the track surface, but I sure as heck wasn't going to drag my rough shoes - with abrasive grit and dirt stuck in the treads - over a fine-grained track surface. It was socks for us!

Since some of the tracks on the middle part of the surface are hard to see, a series of cameras that project a close-up image of the Ignotornis gajinensis tracks on a huge projection screen. It also shows a projection of anyone working on the tracks, putting research on display. In this case, people got to see our socked feet.

The socked foot of Dr. Richard McCrea next to the trackway (and bill swooshes!) of Ignotornis gajinensis. Dr. Kim and I had a bit of a chuckle over this picture.

Not only was there was a track surface live cam, there was a gorgeous mural depicting the Early Cretaceous paleoenvironment, showing the shoreline of the lake complete with sauropods and flocks of birds!

Spoonbill and sandpiper-like birds fly over the future Gajin-ri track site 117 million years ago.

I didn't want to see Ignotornis gajinensis just because it is a famous bird track type: I have research reasons for wanting to see the real deal. I had an idea that I wanted to test: if we didn't have the glorious bill swoops, would we be able to tell Ignotornis gajinenesis apart from Ignotornis mcconnelli? Before visiting this site and seeing the tracks firsthand, I had to rely on measurements and photographs from publications. Now, data and pictures are good, but there's a lot of information that gets washed out in two-dimensional photos. It didn't take me long to abandon the idea that Ignotornis gajinensis and Ignotornis mcconnelli were the same track shape: there are just too many small differences that separate them.

The untrained eye might think I'm pointing out sauropod tracks, but we all know I'm pointing out a really long bird trackway!

We also saw lots of tracks of a track type called Koreanaornis. These are small, three-toed tracks that sometimes - but not all the time - have a small reversed digit impression. These tracks show many individuals skittering all over a wet sandy surface, much like we would see sandpipers at the beach doing today.

A flock of Koreanaornis track makers, likely running all over the lakeshore, looking for food.

We also saw the other fossil interpretive displays. My favorite one (of course) was the interpretive display for Ignotornis gajinensis. This is a good time to point out another similarity between the work our colleagues in South Korea and the work we do in the Peace Region: the scientists design the interpretive displays! Dr. Kim designed this awesome display.

Scientists like Dr. Kim Kyung-soo make awesome science interpretive displays.
Scientists are great at communicating their science to the public.
Check out those awesome spoonbills!

From left to right: Drs. Kim Kyung-soo, Lisa Buckley (me), and Richard McCrea. 

After taking many pictures, and many photogrammetry pictures, and seeing many, many specimens, we drove back to Chinju University to pick up Martin for dinner. Of course, I had to take pictures of these lovely shed exoskeletons of cicadas attached to a quince tree.

We went to a restaurant that only serves two dishes: two variations of stewed ribs. Let me tell you: when a restaurant focuses on one specialty, they do it up right. These ribs were delicious!

I cannot begin to describe the mouth-watering aroma that came from this dish. I have not had better ribs.

That was the end of a very busy day! The next day (September 15) we were scheduled to visit the field sites and collections of the Goseong Dinosaur Museum! Stay tuned!

References

Kim JY, Lockley MG, Seo SJ, Kim KS, Kim SH, Baek KS. 2012.  A paradise of Mesozoic birds: the world's richest and most diverse Cretaceous bird track assemblage from the Early Cretaceous Haman Formation of the Gajin Tracksite, Jinju, Korea. Ichnos 19(1-2): 28-42.

Tracking Cretaceous Birds in South Korea: Chinju Innovation City and Sangcheong-gun

Hello, Dear Readers!

When we last left our heroes, they were finishing up a long day (September 13) of laboratory and field work in Chinju (Jinju) University and Bito Island, respectively. September 14 would also prove to be an exciting field- and museum- day, full of bird tracks! Don't worry: I won't forget the non-avian dinosaur and pterosaur tracks!

Once again I'm forced to break our day into the field component and the museum component because there is just so much to talk about. This week's September 14 post will cover our field activities, and the next post will cover the spectacular Gajin Track Site.

We start off our day with a 7:30am wake-up and met Sujin for breakfast at a local Starbucks around 8:30am. After breakfast, we met Dr. Kim Kyung-soo at the hotel and drove to one of the in-progress construction sites of Jinju Innovation City. Remember in my last post, when I said that one of the similarities between studying tracks in British Columbia and South Korea is that many discoveries were (and continue to be) made as a result of industrial activity? Jinju Innovation City is a perfect example of industry significantly contributing to paleontology discoveries.

Excavations are uncovering track surface after track surface, and with a mandate to preserve national heritage, paleontologists in South Korea have to not only archive these large track-bearing blocks, but they also have to collect them! In the spirit of "necessity is the mother of invention," Dr. Kim designed a novel method for removing and transporting track blocks weighing several hundred kilograms...in one piece. Oh yes: and every picture in which you see a "KS" label on a track specimen? That specimen was collected and documented by Dr. Kim Kyung-soo.

People with visible faces: Drs. Kim Kyung-soo (left), Martin Lockley (center) and Richard McCrea (right) examining one of Dr. Kim's amazing track cradles for a large specimen ready to be removed to collections.

When we have the resources, we are going to bring Dr. Kim and his team over to visit track sites in British Columbia: I would love to see his track slab cradle technique in action!

Not all of the track-bearing surfaces are removed. One of the great approaches we witnessed in South Korea (take note, North America) is that people recognize - and act on - the value of preserving track localities as interpretive sites to educate the public. At this one construction site, two interpretive buildings are under construction for small interpretive centers.

I am just going to add an editorial note: this is the Republic of Korea. The country has a population of in a land area of 51,446,201 (with a density of 507 people per square kilometer) in a 100,210 square kilometers. Land, and space on which to develop, is valuable, and yet the Republic of Korea STILL finds ways to preserve and showcase their fossil heritage with respect. Now look to Canada. We have a population of 35,151,728 people spread over 9,984,670 square kilometers (population density of 3.92 people per square kilometer, albeit concentrated near the border with the United States.) So how come there is so much reticence towards protective buildings such as this one installed over important fossil sites? Take your time.

The track surface is covered to protect it during construction, so we pulled back the layers of tarps and thick felt-like cushioning to visit the surface.

Vertebrate ichnologists LOVE seeing surfaces like this...these are great surfaces for tracks!

We swept off portions of the track site to reveal some tracks with exquisite detail. The track type that has fascinated me (let's be honest: they all fascinate me) are trackways of pterosaurs. Yup: tracks of flying reptiles! When they weren't soaring through the air, pterosaurs walked on surfaces as quadrupeds, leaving wing finger impressions! HOW COOL IS THAT?!?

A pterosaur handprint! Guess what the loooong digit impression is from? (Psst: it's the wing digit!)

Editorial Note: You may want to Google pterosaurs. I don't blame you: they are fascinating archosaurs! However, you may encounter two websites in your search. One is called "ReptileEvolution.com" and the other is called "Pterosaur Heresies," both of which are run by the same person. Both of these sites are full of interesting artwork, but the information they provide on "radical" new ideas about pterosaurs is not supported by information from the fossils. Neither site should be a go-to site for accurate, data-supported information. Read the Tetrapod Zoology blog post on the issue.

One part of Dr. Richard McCrea's work is to refine photogrammetry techniques, particularly with small, low-relief tracks. This little pterosaur handprint is a perfect test subject!

Dr. Richard McCrea takes photogrammetry images for creating a 3D digital model of small tracks.

With a surface that preserved detail like pterosaur tracks, I was very hopeful for bird tracks. I was not disappointed! We didn't have a lot of time at the site, so this is the only definite track I could see, but where there's one, there's likely more!

This isn't the best picture (the room was under construction and unlit) but it is very birdie!

We drove to Sangcheong-gun (Sangcheong County) to check out a track site that was relatively close to the highway. It was a HOT day: the track surface was almost burning hot. It was a great contrast to the raindrop impressions we saw.

Oh yes, that's a bird track in the center of all of those rain drop casts.

This was a lovely track surface for fine details. The bird tracks were exquisite. The bird track in the center of the image above has slight digital pads and a lovely hint of a webbing impression!

You know you have a nice track surface when fine soft tissue details, like skin impressions and webbing impressions, are visible!

There's a lot we can tell about this trackmaker by looking at its footprint. One, this is a small bird (footprint length about 2.5 cm). Two, it doesn't have a well-impressed hallux (or reversed toe), so we know it didn't look or behave like a small crane or egret. Three, this bird only has a little bit of webbing between the middle and outer digit: this isn't a webbed bird like a duck. Four, this bird meandered, stopped, and started again, all over the track surface. This bird, if we were to take a time machine back to the Early Cretaceous, would have looked and behaved a lot like one of our present-day sandpipers. This was another track site exposed by industrial activity (construction of a highway), although our time machine shows us a peaceful scene of a very quiet, silty bank next to a small lake or slow-moving stream.

Also, we would have had to watch out for being stepped on by sauropods! Another thing we know from the tracks is that the sauropod came through first, and then the birds walked on the surface. We know this because the bird trackway actually walks around the sauropod track! How cool is that?

We then drove to a small cafe where we would eat what would be my favorite meal in Korea: naengmyeon, cold noodle soup! (Note: this is only one of many recipes I found online.) Most of the soups we tried in Korea had two versions, a regular version and a spicy version (I went spicy!) This is now a soup I make regularly for dinner, or at least the closest version I can make living in a remote area with limited shopping options.

Stay tuned for our visit to the Gajin-ri track!

Tracking Cretaceous Birds in South Korea: Chinju University

Hello Dear Readers!

I had an interruption in my planned blogging schedule with a long trip out of my office that included a keynote presentation at the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia in Whistler B.C. on October 21, a couple of family visits, and presenting at the Afternoon of Palaeontology conference at the Philip J. Currie Museum in Wembly, A.B. I was also the host for the Real Scientists Twitter account for the week of November 12 (or as it should be officially changed to...Dinovember). THEN I had paper revisions and paper proof revisions to submit for a new ichnospecies of Ignotornis and the first occurrence of Ignotornis in Canada! In the parlance of the Internet, I haz a busy.

Now that I am back at my desk until the end of December, I can dust off Ye Olde Blog and continue with the tale of our ichnological adventure to South Korea! I'll be breaking our adventures of September 13th into two posts. This day was a combination of laboratory-based and field-based investigation, so there is A LOT to cover.

We left our mighty palaeontologists at the Happy Owl Hotel in Jinju.
Note: there are two spellings for the city. Jinju is the official name of the city, while Chinju is the European-style phonetic spelling that isn't being used much nowadays, but several official signs and building names still carry that spelling.

After our fantastic barbeque dinner (there are several styles of Korean barbeque and all of them are delicious) we were in bed (after updating notes) around 1:30 am.

We started September 13th bright and early when Dr. Kim drove us to his lab at Chinju University. There we met his graduate students Su-jin (who drove us from Daejeon to Jinju), and [CHECK NOTES]. We were given an introduction to all of the specimens that were available for study and those that are currently under investigation. Of course, I focused on the bird tracks, but there were so many specimens present that demonstrate the hugely diverse Early Cretaceous paleofauna of South Korea.

There was a bird track slab on the second floor of the Earth Sciences Department that was collected from Jinju Innovation City (more on that later). It preserved at least three bird trackways, and looked as though the ground the birds were walking on was pretty goopy - the toes do not have crisp, clean outlines that show digital pads, but they do show other details that might be missing from a non-goopy sediment, such as deeply impressed toes and webbing impressions.

Slab on the second floor of the Earth Sciences Department at Chinju (Jinju) University. 

The slab is on display for all of the students to see in the main hallway.

Since the track slab was on display in the main hallway, it also meant that I was on display while I was working. No one seemed too disturbed that I was lying on the display to get my measurements.

This part amused me somewhat. See the small gravel used as a decorative bedding to camouflage the supporting foam base? This may have been an outdoor display at some point because a cat had come into contact with the display and left some, um, commentary on what it thought of fossil bird tracks.

Apparently, you shouldn't send your bird track papers to cats to review.

This ranks a 1/10 in terms of animals interacting with fossil displays and fossil sites. The cat scat was easily removed with a plastic bag, and there were only two pieces. There was no smell of urine or evidence of fresh activity. If you want real horror stories of animals interacting with specimens, ask your local collections manager about moth or dermestid beetle infestations. Be kind to the poor souls and buy them a reviving beverage before requesting such a tale of misery and woe.

Step 1 of documenting a track slab such as this one was already done for me: all of the bird tracks on the slab were identified and had numbered stickers associated with them. All of the little white dots you see are number tags identifying a bird track.

This made Step 2 less time-consuming (but necessary) step to complete: outline ALL of the footprints with either a chalk or a soapstone pencil. This outlining step is crucial. First, it makes you look at the individual tracks. I mean, it makes you REALLY look at the tracks. You start to notice features in individual footprints that you might not otherwise see if you are just focusing on the number of tracks in a trackway.

Take a look at these lovely bird tracks.

Tracks 14, 15, and 16 are were made by the same bird, and by the same individual. There is still some overlying sediment that is filling in some of the toe impressions. Although there is some sediment filling in the backward-pointing toe (the hallux), we can see that is has a noticeable outside curve that is consistent in all the tracks. That's cool, and I'll be focusing on what this means for the trackmaker. 

Also, you can see that the step (also called the pace length in the literature) the bird took between track 14 and 15 is longer than the step between tracks 15 and 16. This is a really good example of something that frustrates people who don't really look at tracks: variation. 

Think about you walking from, say, your desk to the coffee/teapot. Are all of your steps equal in length? Did one foot catch a bit on the uneven carpet? Did you pass someone and move slightly off of your path to make sure you didn't shoulder-check them into the wall? There is absolutely no way that the step you take between track 14 and 15 is going to be exactly the same length as the step you take between track 15 and 16. Why? Because you are not a robot. And neither are the dinosaurs and birds that made these tracks. They are dynamic, complex living organisms that will make countless little adjustments as they walk. This is why I think it is important to spend time watching animals move in their natural habitats if you are going to study tracks. As soon as we stop viewing tracks as having been made by living animals, we've lost the purpose of studying fossil tracks: to learn more about the lives of extinct animals using records of their recorded behavior. [Steps off of soapbox.]

I don't have too many pictures of the rest of the team, as they were all down in the main laboratory, either taking photogrammetry images of track slabs (Rich) or making latex peels and plastic tracings of track slabs (Martin.) Rich was also mentoring the graduate students on how to take photogrammetry images. Photogrammetry is like any other computer tool we use in paleontology: garbage data in = garbage results out. In this case, the data are the digital photographs. If the photos are rushed and blurry, or if the settings on the camera change greatly between one photo and the next, or if the overlap of the photos isn't enough (we aim for at least 60% overlap for all of the images), then sure, you'll get a digital model, but you probably won't be able to collect much data from it.

We broke for lunch around 12:30 pm and went to a really good Chinese restaurant. I tried a soup that I was told had sea cucumber in it. If no one had told me I would never have known it was sea cucumber: it had the same taste and texture as portabella mushroom.

Over lunch, we planned our afternoon adventure. We were heading to Bitu Island to see some of the track sites in the field, including a site that has a dromaeosaur (a.k.a. the raptors from Jurassic Park) trackway! 

I was quite excited for our field adventure. All of the track sites we were going to see were on the shoreline, which - for my interests - means that there is a chance to see some modern shorebird tracks! I also enjoy shoreline prospecting: it is so different from the deep woods and mountain prospecting that we usually do in northeastern British Columbia.

Stay Tuned!

Tracking Cretaceous Birds in South Korea: Daejeon

Hello, Dear Readers!

Welcome back to Tracking Cretaceous Birds in Korea! Our first two days of our trip were spent in the city of Daejeon, home of the Natural Heritage Center!

Simplified map of South Korea, from the Daejeon tourist information brochure.

Daejeon is a perfect example of a city that says "Science? Heck yeah: we LOVE SCIENCE, and we know you love it as well!" It is one of the few cities I have visited that does both a) a spectacular amount of research and heritage conservation, and b) is so proud of it that they talk about it on tourist brochures.

"Enjoy visiting Daejeon, a city of science, culture, and ecology." Yes, you see that correctly: science is highlighted.

Editorial Note: Daejeon - and the entire experience of visiting Korea - shone the world's largest spotlight on how stingy North American culture and government is regarding respect and resources for heritage conservation and research. We had many long conversations with our Korean colleagues on this subject. Oh yes: researchers talk to one another quite extensively. We ALL know who has been naughty and who has been nice. What we were blown away by was the overall attitude that giving resources to heritage research and conservation is the right thing to do. It's considered good for the country, good for the general education and enlightenment of the population, and good for the world. In contrast, the North American mindset is "How will giving resources to heritage make me money and benefit me?" I think this is part of the colonialism mindset. We should be ashamed of ourselves, North America.

Entrance to the Natural Heritage Center.

After meeting with staff of the Natural Heritage Center (a complex of several buildings and an interpretive center), we were taken to the collections building to see the dinosaur and bird tracks. Much like northeastern British Columbia, much of Korea's ichnology specimens occur on large rock slabs. Their collections facility is set up with this in mind:

Ichnology collections of the Natural Heritage Center in Daejeon, South Korea. Check out the shelving!

The collections facility also has small cabinets for the smaller track specimens. I definitely appreciate the removable plexi-glass covers on all of the drawers.

There are also several track specimens attached to heavy metal shelves on the walls. How do we access those? Well, fear not! Those counter tops are heavy duty (can take the weight of several specimens and an ichnologist or two), and there's a lift!

Dr. Richard McCrea gets his photogrammetry camera ready while Dr. Kyung-soo Kim positions the lift to access wall specimens.

There were so many specimens to document that time seemed to fly for us. While Rich documented specimens using photogrammetry, I collected primary data and images from bird track specimens of interest, and Martin collected data and latex peels from bird, dinosaur, and other vertebrate track specimens of interest.

Drs. Martin Lockley and Richard McCrea planning their specimen documentation strategy.

Dr. Richard McCrea collecting photogrammetry images for future 3D digital models.

Dr. Martin Lockley applying latex.

Of course, it's hot and humid in South Korea: we made a point to stay hydrated while working. We also had to counteract the humidity. Ichnologists are an ingenious bunch, so it did not take long to secure a hair dryer.

Ta-da! This latex peel was ready in the couple of days we had in Daejeon.

Our colleagues made sure that we took lunch breaks. Our first lunch in Daejeon was a version of bulgogi beef, spicy onion cakes, and a huge variety of side dishes.

Ready to fuel ourselves on bulgogi for an afternoon of ichnology!
Left to right: Me, Dr. Richard McCrea, Dr. Martin Lockley.

Our hosts took care of the ordering.

Dr. Kyung-soo Kim and his graduate student Won-mi.

Everything here is delicious!

Our second lunch in Daejeon was a great spicy soup and rice. There was always a spicy and a regular version of soups. Being a fan of spice, I always ordered the spicy version. With the exception of one green pepper, there was no dish that I encountered that was too spicy.

Spicy hot soup, rice, and kimchi.

I have very few images of me in collections, as I was too busy documenting specimens. However, I have plenty of pictures of Early Cretaceous bird tracks! Here is a very small sample of everything that I saw:

A specimen of one of the ichnospecies of Ignotornis, likely Ignotornis yangi.

Jindongornipes kimi (outlined in blue chalk.) This is a fairly large bird track, with a nice hallux impression...sometimes.

Speaking of inconsistently preserved hallux (reversed toe) impressions, this is a great specimen that is going to be used to answer a couple of Cretaceous bird track questions I have.

Well hello there, fascinating specimen!

I also investigated some of the large slabs for very shallow bird tracks. Small, shallow tracks are difficult to see even in good light. One little tool I've found useful are these mini-flashlights. Ever since our adventures without a flashlight documenting the tyrannosaur track site, we never leave home without some source of light.

I have one of these mini-flashlights attached to every one of my field bags.

The low-angle light highlighted these small, tridactyl bird tracks.

These tracks are very similar to an Early Cretaceous bird track type that we find in northeastern British Columbia. I have to do some more detailed comparative work to be sure, but I'm fairly excited about this!

After lunch on our second day in Daejeon, we took some time to check out the displays of the Natural Heritage Center.

The outside of the interpretive display area, with silhouettes of important fauna of South Korea.

Right outside of the entrance, is a nice little habitat for the Reeve's Turtle, an endangered species.

Interpretive sign for the Reeve's Turtle habitat.

We actually saw some Reeve's Turtle! They must have decided not to wear their jaunty hats (as seen in the sign.)

Here's our friend, the Reeve's Turtle!

The entrance of the interpretive center has a large tree, and perched in it were several taxidermied birds. The picture is fairly dim: I don't use flash photography for displays that have textiles (feathers and fur included.)

Look HOO is here! A Great Horned Owl!

The displays were very good: they never shy away from the scientific importance of historic places, ecosystems, and heritage sites. A great example was a display on proper etiquette for visiting caves.

Textual and pictorial lesson on cave etiquette. Don't poke the cave fauna!

Tracks featured prominently in the displays. Here are crane tracks to show visitors where to stand on an interactive display.

They even included the teeny hallux impressions and the small webbing. Should have sent a poet.

The taxidermy collection showcased several bird species. Of course, I focused my pictures on modern analogs to our Cretaceous shorebirds and wading birds.

The Red-crowned Crane. Check out the feets!

Of course, with all of the owls that are in South Korea, I really had to take pictures of the owl displays.

Collared Scops Owl is judging us all.

There were track displays as well!

Plant-eating dinosaur, aka ornithopod tracks.

The dinosaur track displays we saw at the interpretive center are very similar to how we do our displays at the PRPRC: track-oriented. The dinosaurs that are presented are there to show what the trackmakers looked like. Skeletons, being rare in South Korea, are not the centerpiece of displays. Goseong is a very important track area: I'll write about our visit there as well!

After we visited the displays, we returned to the collections and worked until around 6:30pm. We were waiting for two graduate students, Su-jin and Peter, to pick us up and drive us to Jinju, our next research destination.

Our drive to Jinju was pleasant. I was absolutely not prepared for the surprise that awaited us when we arrived at what was going to be our home for the next three days:

The Happy Owl Hotel! IT'S AN OWL-THEMED HOTEL!!!

I cannot begin to describe the excited noises I made when we pulled up to the Happy Owl Hotel.
Owls are my favorite dinosaurs. This is an owl-themed hotel. If I ever need to do a writing retreat for a future book, I'm staying at this hotel. Now you'll see a *very* small sample of all of the pictures I took.

I'm home.

If you thought the outside was full of owls, wait until you see the inside!

There were even more owls in the reception area!

Try as I might, I don't think I photographed all of the owls on display in the Happy Owl Hotel...but I tried!

We crashed in to bed around 1:00am local time. It was a long day, and we knew we were in for a similarly long day tomorrow at Dr. Kyung-soo Kim's lab at Chinju University and targeted field sites. 

Tune in next week for our adventures at Chinju University and our visits to field sites!