Taibai Huayang Dragon
Taibai Huayang dragon head bone
The Zigong Large-scale Site Museum built on the site of the world-famous "Dashanpu Dinosaur Fossil Group Site" is another large-scale on-site museum in China after the Banpo Site and the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Pit of Qin Shi Huang, and is also the first professional dinosaur museum in China, one of the three major dinosaur site museums in the world, and is evaluated by National Geographic magazine as "the best dinosaur museum in the world". Covering an area of more than 66,000 square meters, the museum has a collection of fossil specimens that include all known dinosaur species from the Jurassic period 201-145 million years ago, and is one of the largest collections and displays of Jurassic dinosaur fossils in the world.
On May 18th, World Museum Day, explore the Zigong Dinosaur Museum in advance, such a rich collection of fossils, which fossil is the treasure of the Zigong Dinosaur Museum?
Fossil Burial Hall Zigong Dinosaur Museum Essence
Entering the "Dragon Palace", stepping through hundreds of millions of years of time, entering the era of distant stone dinosaurs, the prehistoric scene in front of you is awe-inspiring: the basement of the central hall and the fossil burial hall are like a huge "dinosaur cemetery", and the remains of many animals are like the "Ten Thousand Dragon Pit" that was "buried alive" after being killed, which is amazing.
It is understood that the fossil burial hall is the essence of the Zigong Dinosaur Museum, with an area of about 1,000 square meters, and has now peeled off about 40 individual materials of a variety of dinosaur fossils and symbiotic animal fossils that overlap and stagger, and all fossils maintain their original burial status.
Head up to the Dinosaur Age Animal and Plant Hall on the second floor of the museum, which displays nearly 20 fossil specimens of animals unearthed from this fossil site. Fossil specimens of dinosaurs of different shapes and their symbiotic animals such as fish, turtles, amphibians, plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, and triangular toothed mammals show visitors the ecological appearance and combination characteristics of the Jurassic dinosaur fauna in a large mountain shop. Go to the tall and spacious situational exhibition hall, where more than 10 scenes such as the speed of life and death, fighting back, warm family, licking and calfing, walking together, the small point of the dinosaur kingdom, the meat eating strong food, the continuation of life, and the dying struggle introduce more than ten complete dinosaur fossil skeletons to tourists.
The Huaxi City Reader reporter saw that the most eye-catching behemoth in the hall was the "Tianfu Emei Dragon", whose head was supported by a slender cervical vertebrae, about 9 meters from the ground, about 20 meters long, a thick body, a long tail, four feet on the ground, and standing tall. Next to it is the skeleton of a ferocious "Construction Air Dragon" that can eat the "Raus's Spirit Dragon", and its whole body is also four or five meters long. There are also progressive and primitive sauropod dinosaurs - Li's Shu Dragon, a small body, bipedal ornithischian dinosaurs - multi-toothed He Xinlu Dragon and so on.
Why did the Taibai Huayang Dragon become the treasure of the town hall?
Since the discovery of China's first dinosaur fossil in Heilongjiang in 1902, archaeologists have excavated many genera of dinosaur fossils on the land of China, and the number, type, completeness, preservation and scientific value of dinosaur fossils have occupied a place in the world's dinosaur research, becoming a dinosaur power, and have been recognized and affirmed by archaeologists in the world. Scientists have selected the "Top Ten Famous Dinosaur Fossils" with historical significance and research value in Chinese dinosaur fossils, and the Taibai Huayang Dragon found in Zigong has been selected together with famous dinosaurs such as Heilongjiang Manchurian Dragon, Shishi Pan-footed Dragon, and Hechuan Mamenxi Dragon.
Ye Yong, director of the research department of the Zigong Dinosaur Museum, told reporters that Taibai Huayang dragon is a primitive stegosaur, with a body length of about 4.3 meters, only found in Zigong Dashanpu, "It is not only the most complete preserved stegosaurus fossil found in the world, but also the earliest and most primitive stegosaurus fossil of the era, providing conclusive fossil evidence for the theory that stegosaurus originated in Asia." "As of the excavations so far, the Zigong Dinosaur Museum has and only one of the best-preserved fossils of Taibai Huayang Dragon, which shows its preciousness.
West China City Reader Lan Jiang (Courtesy of Zigong Dinosaur Museum)