Erlianhaote Dinosaur Museum

Erlianhaote Dinosaur Museum

Erlianhaote City is the earliest dinosaur fossil site in Inner Mongolia to be recorded in international paleontological history. As early as 70 million years ago, the area around Erlian Salt Lake was covered with lakes, swamps, and dense forests in a hot and humid climate — an ideal habitat for dinosaurs. Starting from the 1990s with Russian academician Obolensky, over the course of 100 years, paleontologists and geologists from Russia, the United States, Canada, and China have conducted six major expeditions and excavations here. They have successively discovered more than ten types of fossils, including those of Euhelopus, Euoplocephalus, hadrosaurs, ornithomimosaurs, ankylosaurs, and ceratopsians. A large number of relatively complete dinosaur bone fossils have been unearthed, among which the discovery of dinosaur egg fossils set the earliest record in China.

The Erlian Basin in northern Inner Mongolia contains exceptionally rich fossils of dinosaurs and other vertebrates, earning it the title “dinosaur graveyard” among paleontologists. It is one of the earliest regions in Asia where dinosaur fossils were discovered, featuring a wide variety of species. The Cretaceous dinosaur fossils found here represent the characteristics of the latest global dinosaur activity, giving them extremely high scientific research value. In 1998, Inner Mongolia established the Erlian Basin–Chagan Nur Dinosaur Fossil Nature Reserve. The Erlianhaote Dinosaur Museum displays fossils of marine animals from the Paleozoic era and mammals from the Cenozoic era. Two mounted Cretaceous dinosaur skeletons are incredibly lifelike, having attracted tens of thousands of domestic and international visitors. Many have left comments praising it as truly “the hometown of dinosaurs.”

In recent times, news of major dinosaur fossil discoveries has continuously emerged from this basin. In August 2000, experts from the Inner Mongolia Museum discovered a large fossil layer containing extensive dinosaur bone remains, which world-renowned dinosaur expert and researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Dong Zhiming called “a rare find even in the history of paleontological fossil excavation.” Later, Chinese paleontologists announced the discovery of a new fossil belonging to a therizinosaurid dinosaur in the Erlian Basin, which experts named “Inner Mongolia Dragon.”

Experts who discovered these dinosaur fossils are excited that the rich findings in the Erlian Basin Dinosaur Fossil Area around the turn of the century will play a positive role in enhancing the visibility of Inner Mongolia — which is undergoing large-scale western development — as well as in promoting public understanding of science and culture. They suggest that, under the premise of scientific excavation, research, and protection, a site museum should be established as soon as possible to boost the development of tourism and cultural exchanges and cooperation between China and foreign countries within the autonomous region. According to information from the regional government, construction of the Erlian Basin Dinosaur Site Museum project has gradually begun.

Reports indicate that the site for this large-scale Dinosaur Site Museum has been preliminarily selected in the central area where a large fossil layer of dinosaur bones was discovered. This location lies eight kilometers northeast of Erlianhaote City, a border port in Inner Mongolia, at an elevation of over 900 meters on an open terrain.