Dinosaur fossils

Dinosaur fossils

Erlianhot is one of the earliest regions in China and Asia where dinosaur fossils were discovered. Since the 1920s, scientists from China, Canada, the United States, Belgium, the Soviet Union, and other countries have conducted multiple scientific expeditions and excavations in Erlianhot, uncovering a wide variety of dinosaur fossils such as hadrosaurs, ornithomimosaurs, tyrannosaurs, ankylosaurs, and sauropods, forming the “Erlian Dinosaur Fauna.” As a result, the city has earned the reputation of being the “Hometown of Dinosaurs.” It currently represents the Late Cretaceous fauna of China and Asia, enjoying high recognition both domestically and internationally. Notably, between August and October 2000, a joint Sino-Belgian dinosaur expedition team excavated a dinosaur fossil burial site covering over 200 square meters at Erlian Salt Lake. Within this burial zone lies a 30-centimeter-thick fossil layer, with fossils stacked in layers, intricately intertwined, creating a spectacular and visually striking scene. The vast area and the abundance of fossils make this one of the rarest scientific discoveries in the past century. Erlianhot places great emphasis on the protection and utilization of dinosaur fossils. In addition to safeguarding the dinosaur graveyard in the suburbs, the city established a 252-square-meter Dinosaur Museum in 1989, and then built a new 2,000-square-meter museum—the second of its kind in China and the only one in the region—on September 28, 2002. The museum displays a large number of fossils and precious photographs.

Dinosaurs were a large and diverse group of ancient vertebrates that are now extinct. Research indicates that the earliest dinosaurs lived about 220 million years ago, while the last dinosaurs roamed the Earth around 65 million years ago. They thrived on Earth for approximately 150 million years. As dominant terrestrial species, dinosaurs were not only the most successful land animals in terms of size but also in their long reign over the planet. They had upright limbs, agile minds, and inhabited every corner of the world. Over the past 200 years, the scientific community has identified at least 800 different species of dinosaurs, and recent assessments suggest that there may be three times as many yet to be discovered.

Dinosaurs belong to the same major group as modern snakes, crocodiles, and lizards, all classified as reptiles in zoology. The term “dinosaur” was first coined in 1842 by the British paleontologist Richard Owen. When creating this term, Owen primarily aimed to describe some of the then-discovered giant, somewhat fearsome, lizard-like ancient reptiles, which he called “terrible lizards.” Chinese geologists and paleontologists translated it as “恐龙 (kǒnglóng),” meaning “terrifying dragon,” drawing on China’s longstanding legends of dragons, regarded as the king of scaled creatures. They translated the Greek word “Sauria” (meaning lizard) as “龙 (lóng),” or dragon, to generally refer to these ancient dinosaurs.