In Pursuit of Early Mammals

3. Paleontological Exploration of Mongolia by American, Japanese, Soviet, and Russian Expeditions, including the Mongolian Academy/American Museum and Mongolia/Japan Joint Expeditions

19 3 Paleontological Exploration of Mongolia by American, Japanese, Soviet, and Russian Expeditions, including the Mongolian Academy/American Museum and Mongolia/Japan Joint Expeditions At the end of the nineteenth century, paleontological investigations had become fairly advanced in the United States and in various parts of Europe. At that time the problem of the place of origin of placental mammals was widely discussed. Rich placental faunas were known from Paleocene deposits, but no single placental mammal had been recovered from the underlying Late Cretaceous formations. The diversity of placental mammals in the Paleocene indicated that they must have had a long history during the Cretaceous, perhaps outside of North America and Europe to where they migrated at the beginning of the Paleocene. Around 1900, the eminent American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935), director of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, suggested that the pre-Paleocene development of placental mammals could have taken place in Central Asia. Twenty years later, the issue of the place of origin of placental mammals was under discussion again at the American Museum of Natural History . It was suggested that the Gobi Desert might reveal such terrestrial Cretaceous fossils. After two years of preparations, in April 1922 the first of a series of expeditions of the American Museum of Natural History, known from 1926 on as the Central Asiatic Expeditions, left Peking (Beijing) for Mongolia under the leadership of well-known explorer Roy Chapman Andrews (figure 3.1). Between 1922 and 1930, five successive expeditions explored the southern region of today’s Mongolian People’s Republic, as well as Inner Mongolia territory, which now is a part of China. Expeditions were organized on a grand scale, the largest made up of forty members. The main purpose of the expeditions was paleontological, but topographers, geographers, geologists, archeologists, zoologists, and botanists also took part. The main base of the expedition was in Peking. The leader of the paleontological part of the expeditions was a paleontologist from the American Museum of Natural History–Walter W. Granger (figure 3.2). Much about the life and work of Walter Granger is known because of his grandnephew Vincent L. Morgan, who established the Granger Papers Project in 1993 and later wrote a monograph devoted Central Asiatic Expeditions of the American Museum of Natural History (122–130) In Pursuit of Early Mammals 20 to his life (Morgan and Lucas 2002). In 2000 he established the Walter Granger Memorial Award. Walter Willis Granger (figure 3.2) was born at Middletown Springs, Vermont , on 7 November 1872 to the family of Charles H. and Ada Haynes Granger. His father Charles was an agent for Mutual Life Insurance and a distinguished member of the Rutland School Board in Vermont. After finishing primary school and the first year of high school, Walter, just 17, left home in September 1890 and found a job at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. From early childhood Walter had shown an interest in biology, collecting fossil and living animals, and had become a skillful taxidermist. In fact, Granger spent his first six years in the Taxidermy Department of the museum. Beginning in 1896 Granger moved to the Vertebrate Paleontology Department during its heyday under Henry Fairfield Osborn, collecting dinosaur and mammal fossils. He carried out much of this period’s best collecting and research on Paleocene and Eocene mammals from the American Western Interior, frequently collaborating with fellow mammal paleontologists William King Gregory, William Diller Matthew, and George Gaylord Simpson. Granger possessed the keen eye, steady hand, and infinite patience needed for finding and collecting even the most delicate fossils. While his primary localities were the basins and ranges in Wyoming, New Mexico, and South Dakota, he also participated in two major AMNH foreign field campaigns: the Fayum of Egypt expedition in 1907 and the famous Central Asiatic Expeditions (CAE) to China and Mongolia from 1921 to 1930, which resulted in so many key dinosaur and mammal discoveries. In the spring of 1921, Granger sailed out of San Francisco with his wife Anna, bound for China. He was one of the first of a stream of CAE scientists to follow over the next decade to pursue systematic scientific explorations in China and Mongolia. The Central Asiatic Expeditions, so termed by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1926, captured the fascination of scientists, adventurers, and enthusiasts all over the world. The paleontological accomplishments alone are heralded even today. Granger was the CAE’s chief paleontologist...