Hope for unveiling mystery for dinosaur's extinction promising

It is learnt from the Research Center of Paleontology and Stratigraphy, elite Jilin University in northeast China that the "Cretaceous Period biology group and K / T boundary research in the Heilongjiang River valley" launched jointly by scientists from both at home and abroad has entered into the high-precision phase. This indicates that the complete stratum record of organism's extinction and ensuing recovery 65 million years ago within the territory of China will be spotted, which will also eventually advance the final confirmation of K / T boundary in the area around Heilongjiang River.

The K / T boundary refers to the boundary of the Cretaceous Period (K), the period connecting the Mesozoic Era and Cenozoic Era, and the Tertiary Period (T) 65 million years ago. During the Cretaceous Period the terrestrial animals represented by dinosaur and marine creatures represented by ammonite multiplied unprecedentedly before they withered away rapidly at the end of the period, and substituted by a profusion of mammal and angiosperm. This global bio-geological incident has been the focus of the worldwide geological circles.

In the past the land facies K / T boundary could be defined with relatively precisions in North America alone. In 2002, Chinese scientists found the evidence in this regard in Heilongjiang River valley of northeast China for the first time. Over the past four years, scientists both at home and abroad headed by noted paleontologist Prof. Sun Ge from Jilin University have carried out comprehensive researches in paleontology and geochemistry, systematically set up the biological stratum alignments of the late Cretaceous Period in Jiayin region along Heilongjiang River for the first time, newly built two big plant fossil combinations of both early and late Cretaceous Period and five fossil combinations of five spores and pollen, and launched a thorough comparison study of the organism group and strata of the late Cretaceous Period and the early Tertiary Period along Heilongjiang River. Meanwhile, the scientists have done detailed researches on the biology and geological events around the period of K / T boundary in Heilongjiang River valley, proposed new viewpoints on the reason for the dinosaur's extinction, and offered new materials for the probe of the global organism's evolvement in K / T boundary.

At present, this land facies K / T boundary study has already been designated within the bank area of streams near Wuyun town of Jiayin county in China's northernmost Heilongjiang province. Through the test-drilling verification and lab analyses, the project team has already found the typical biological fossil combination of the latest Cretaceous Period and the earliest Tertiary Period around the K / T boundary, and the research has entered the final most-precision phase.

By People's Daily Online