100-million-year-old dinosaur fossil found in northeast China

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, October 14, 2003

100-million-year-old dinosaur fossil found in northeast China

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Chinese scientists announced Monday the "first discovery in East Asia" of fossilized bones of a 100-million-year-old dinosaur at a village in northeast China's Jilin Province, an area rare in dinosaurs fossils finds.

The find includes fossils of a one-meter-long lower limb and three-meter-long vertebra, said Professor Sun Ge, director of paleontology and stratigraphy research center with Jilin University.

"The entire dinosaur might measure some 20 meters long by inference after our data analysis," Sun said.

The fossil was first discovered by Zhang Xianshan, a farmer at Xidi Village in Jiutai City, who later alerted local authorities in late September reporting he had discovered "rocks like bones".

Scientists at the center rushed to the scene and uncovered the "bone-like" fossil before transporting it to Changchun-based JilinUniversity.

The purple stratum where the fossil was found dates to the Cretaceous Period sediment, which means the fossil might date back90 million to 100 million years, scientists said.

"The pieces are from Titanosauridae, a vegetarian giant dinosaur species," said Professor Dong Zhiming, who specializes indinosaur research.

"It is the first discovery of such dinosaurs in east Asia," Dong said, adding that the discovery will help further the study on the evolution of dinosaurs in China.

"We found some smaller dinosaur fossils, probably a dinosaur group, at the dig," he said.

The Titanosauridae dominated the Jurassic Period and CretaceousPeriod more than 100 million years ago. The well-known Mamenchisaurus, giant dinosaurs once discovered in China's westernregions of Xinjiang and Sichuan, also belong to the Titanosauridaecategory.

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