ancient myth of the beaked griffin.
The first dinosaur bone collected
in modern times in Sichuan was
found by a Californian, Professor
George D. Louderback, in about 1915.
Fossils continued to be found here in
the 1930s, but the rate of discovery
skyrocketed in the late ‘70s.
When a highway was built in 1972
through Dashanpu, 7km from the
centre of Zigong, workers exposed
fossils, but the bones didn’t get
much attention as China’s academic
community was still suffering the
ravages of the Cultural Revolution,
which had stymied scientific output.
Seven years later in 1979, an oil and
gas company began excavating a site
here for a parking lot. Again workers
began to find fossil bones and were
perplexed as to what to do with them.
Leading Chinese palaeontologist
Professor Dong Zhiming, of the
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology
and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, says
that when he arrived in December
1979 he was shocked by what he saw.
“Fossils were everywhere, just like
the peanuts waiting to be taken from
the plate... As workers did not care
about the bones, they did a terrible
devastation at the site. My heart bled.”
The great number and variety of
fossils gave him the idea of pushing
for official preservation of the site
and working to get a museum built
here to educate the public about the
discoveries. Local authorities halted
construction to protect the site, and
between 1979 and 1981 teams led by
Dong dug up about 8000 bones. In
1987 the Zigong Dinosaur Museum
opened, and was the first of its kind
in Asia. It has more than 30 largely
complete fossils skeletons on display,
as well as a great deal of interpretive
information in both Chinese and
English, colourful dioramas and,
perhaps most fascinating, an open dig
site with many of the partially exposed
dinosaurs still in place.
The Dashanpu quarry at Zigong
has yielded not only 26 species of
dinosaur from the Middle and LateJurassic (176–145 million years ago)
but also a complete fauna of fishes,
amphibians, mammals, crocodiles,
plesiosaurs and pterosaurs. Other
interesting fossils include eggs, skin
impressions and plants such as tree
ferns and ginkos.
A number of things mark the site
out as special, says Professor Peng
Guangzhao, senior researcher at the
Zigong Dinosaur Museum. These
include the fact that, as at Lufeng,
there is a great concentration of fossils
here. Of the 200 or so skeletons so
far dug up, 10 are more than 80 per
cent complete and a further 40 are
more than 50 per cent so. Another
reason for Zigong’s importance is that
it fills an Asian fossil black spot in the
Middle Jurassic. The range of speciesPalaeo puller. The Zigong Dinosaur Museum
(top) is a major Chinese tourist attraction, says
senior researcher Professor Peng Guangzhao
(above). The sprawling complex features a
building in the shape of a giant sauropod, such
as these three specimens of Shunosaurus (left).DESTINATIONS
102 Australian Geographic