Of those extinct beings, dinosaurs are one of the most fascinating biological taxa. Countless scientists have searched the world for their presence, trying to "decipher" the codes from ancient times.
Reporter: A skull, a spine, buried deep in the ground for hundreds of millions of years, when they see the light of day again, how do scientists make these "silent stones" speak? With this curiosity, I went to a place. Here, I saw such dinosaur fossils, as well as a lively scene about the land we lived on hundreds of millions of years ago. How did Chinese scientists build up a huge amount of prehistoric information step by step from the study of these stones?
Reporter: This is the first dinosaur discovered, studied and mounted by Chinese himself- Xu's Lufeng Dragon. This is a plant-eating dinosaur that lived in the early Jurassic Period, and its discovery opened the prelude to the study of dinosaurs in China. And Lufeng has thus become the hometown of Chinese dinosaurs.
You Hailu, researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: The dinosaurs found before are more in the middle and late Cretaceous and Jurassic periods worldwide. Then the early Jurassic period is very rare in the world, so the discovery of this dinosaur at the time of This Lufeng is a very big contribution to the discovery and research of paleovertebrates in the whole world.
Lu Fenglong's discovery was in the era of war. There is a scene in the movie "No Questions Asked": Under the bombardment of Japanese aircraft, the teachers and students of southwest united universities hid in the cave for ancient biology classes. The prototype of the old professor in the lecture is Yang Zhongjian, the discoverer of Lu Fenglong and the founder of the chinese dinosaur fossil research. And this dinosaur model in the classroom is Lu Fenglong. It was in those difficult times that Chinese scientists began an 80-year exploration of prehistoric creatures such as dinosaurs.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Chinese scientists discovered a large number of dinosaur fossils in the Sichuan Basin and Xinjiang, which opened up two treasure houses for Chinese dinosaur research, and Chinese dinosaur research began to advance rapidly. During this period, Chinese scientists named a total of 35 dinosaur species, more than the previous 40 years combined. The gap left by the dinosaurs, thanks to the efforts of Chinese scientists, has been filled little by little.
Reporter: This is a dinosaur trapped in a stone. After hundreds of millions of years of deposition, the fossil not only preserves its skeleton intact, but also leaves traces of feathers, providing new research evidence for the academic community to argue about the relationship between birds and dinosaurs for hundreds of years. It is named the Millennium Chinese Bird Dragon.
You Hailu, researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: The origin and evolution of feathers also involve the origin and evolution of flight, and a series of these problems have been well explained through these newly discovered specimens, which can be said to be the hottest spot in the field of dinosaurs in the international research, and it can also be said that it is the field with the most achievements.
Since 1996, Chinese scientists have discovered a large number of exquisitely preserved feathered dinosaurs and ancient bird fossils in western Liaoning, northern Hebei and southeastern Inner Mongolia, which have pushed China to the forefront of paleontological research. Dinosaur research in China has also entered a new stage. Since 2000, Chinese scientists have named as many as 190 dinosaur species. The ancient secrets left by those fossils are increasingly being "deciphered".
You Hailu, researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: The past is a key to the future. Dinosaurs are just a window into the study of past life, but through dinosaurs we can cross these multidisciplinary disciplines to really let us understand the process of biological evolution, especially what the nature of life is.
Source: CCTV News Client