----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert G. Tuck Jr." <tuckr@digital.net>
To: <bkazmer39@yahoo.com>; <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: Josh Smith et al in Egypt
A few personal observations:
1) Aluminum foil to wrap fossils before applying plaster casts? Geeze, all
we had was toilet paper (otherwise known as "camp stationery") in the Texas
Permian Redbeds;
2) During my eight years of field work in Iran and Pakistan, among other
things, I (barely) survived much more severe sandstorms, perverse
dust-devils (they *do* seem to have satanic minds of their own),
temperatures ranging from -30 F to +120 F, a Land Rover that locked up its
front wheels in central Iran (despite which we remained upright after a
spiral trajectory into the roadside desert), nearly lost its rear wheel in
remote Seistan along the Afghanistan/Iran/Pakistan border (saved by a much
needed "pit-stop"!), and burned out its clutch in Pakistan's remote Makran
(which place nearly destroyed Alexander and his army in 325 B.C.E.),
detention by diligent Pakistani police, and a bloody, violent,
fundamentalist Shi'ite Islamic revolution by the followers of the late
'Ayatollah Khomeini ;
3) I had to contend with and placate rebellious tribes (Qasqai, Kurds,
Bakhtiari, etc.), whilst collecting and preparing zoological specimens in
the midst of central Iran (being a crazy man catching mice, lizards, and
bugs and who spoke fractured Farsi helped put me under 'Allah's protection);
and
4) No matter where, or in how remote a location, I set up camp in Iran or
Pakistan, it immediately attracted camel caravans and shepherds with flocks
of noisome sheep: being awakened at 2:00 a.m. by chants, and camel-bells,
and camel silhouettes against a starry sky in Iranian Azarbaijan is one
memory I'll gladly retain; being under the spotlights and guns of Soviet
watchtowers on the northwestern Caspian Sea shore is one memory I'd prefer
to forget (ironically, it was a Soviet mammalogist who designated one of my
specimens -- collected in the area despite USSR misgivings -- as the type of
a new species of dormouse, _Myomimus setzeri_, named in honor of my
Smithsonian Institution supervisor at the time).
Actually, I think Josh and company got short-changed during their six-week
expedition.
-= Tuck =-