A Search for Life from an Ancient “Lost”
Continent in the Andes of Bolivia
Explorers Club Final Report 2008
Submitted February 2010
Annie Jeong
Barnard College
In the summer of 2008, I boarded a plane to La Paz, Bolivia, with the mission to
survey the Salla beds of the Andes Mountains for life from the late Oligocene period—
about 27-24 million years ago. During this period, South America was an isolated
continent, rich in animal diversity, as evidenced by the number and rate of fossils
uncovered and described. Fossils found on my excavation had the potential to provide
new evidence of species that lived during the Oligocene in different parts of the
continent. In a land where rain forests were adjacent to snow capped mountains, what
was the habitat like millions of years ago, and what kinds of animals lived in them?
Before heading into the dry, cold, and rarely traversed lands of Salla, Bolivia, I
first had to acclimate to the 3,600 M altitude. Feeling only slightly inebriated from the
change of air quantity I was accustomed to, I immersed myself in Bolivian culture as I
explored the city, walking through the brightly colored markets that sold delicious fruits
that I had never seen before, alongside herbal leaves, household products, and potatoes. I
could never have imagined that in just a few days, I would be making my way through a
landscape vastly different but still remarkable, consisting of only the blue of the sky, the
green of the prickly shrubs, and the many reds of the earth.
The vibrant markets in La Paz, Bolivia
The Salla beds of the Andes Mountains, Bolivia.
In Salla, the U.S. team—Dr. Bruce J. Shockey from the American Museum of
Natural History and my mentor, a fellow researcher, and I—met the Bolivia team, a
professor of Geology from Universidad Autónoma “Tomás Frías” in Potosí and his
twenty students. We set up camp above a dry river bed and went on daily excursions
from there, making our own trails as we climbed the clay cliffs, searching for fossils of
long-gone mammals. Surveying the grounds as we walked miles a day left me with an
expertise in finding small jaws and teeth, though for me, larger bones may as well have
been rocks. Using the striations of the earth, we roughly dated the fossils we found—
multiple jaws, an armadillo, bones of unknown animals, and parts of a glyptodont. We
carefully wrapped each treasure so they may be stored and studied by the Bolivian team.
After a week in the field, we left with a large cargo of fossils and with the knowledge that
Salla was in fact fossil-rich.
Safely collecting and packing fossils that we found.
I left with the sense of accomplishment that only comes with knowing that what
we had found may be brand new and unknown to science and that it will undoubtedly
help us further learn about the natural history of South America, from the geology that
shaped the Andes Mountains to the phylogeny of the animals that resided there.
The grant I received from the Explorers Club Youth Activity Fund has allowed
me to conduct this research in Bolivia, by providing me with funds to make my visa and
flight costs affordable. Without the support provided by the Explorers Club, I would not
have been able to camp and hike in the Andes mountains, to test my abilities and
endurance as well as build a search image that allows me to identify rodents of South
America. I hope to be able to survey the other portions of the Andes for fossils, which
crosses the eastern side of South America, and to connect species that may have roamed
together millions of years ago.
Making my way up the mountain, pick axe in hand.
Dr. Bruce J. Shockey, retracing the steps we made
in search of new fossil beds.
Acknowledgements:
My research in Bolivia could not have been completed without Dr. Bruce J. Shockey,
Alexandra Neinast, and Cristina and Federico Anaya.