Have you ever seen a four-legged fish?
Have you ever heard of a dinosaur with four feathered wings?
Poke the video punch card China Paleozoological Museum!
Organisms have evolved over hundreds of millions of years
There are many things you don't know
Video loading...
China is the country with the largest number of dinosaur species found in the world, and as of the end of 2018, about 300 species of dinosaurs have been discovered. The Paleozoological Museum of China has selected more than 700 pieces from more than 400,000 specimens collected in the past century to exhibit here. From the Cambrian period 500 million years ago to 10,000 years ago, various paleontological fossils and stone tool specimens converged here.
△ Chinese Paleozoological Museum
Latimai: When fish begin to yearn for land
The Ratimai fish is a "living fossil" of the total finfish family from 400 million years ago. This specimen of ratimi fish on display at the Paleozoological Museum of China is well preserved in a special preservative. From the appearance, its most obvious feature is the even fin of the fleshy limb type. Scientists have found that the fins of the ratimi fish contain bones, and the bone structure is very similar to the limbs of quadruped vertebrates. So, the Ratimai provides anatomically important evidence for fish to climb from water onto land. To this day, they still live on Earth.
△ Ratimi fish
Gu's Little Raptor: When dinosaurs learned to fly
Where do birds come from? There is a hypothesis in today's scientific community that birds may have evolved from small feathered dinosaurs, some of which were able to fly and had two pairs of wings, and Gu's little robber is representative of this stage of evolution. The fossil of Gu's little robber was found in the western part of Liaoning Province, China. A model of a orthographic specimen of Gu's little robbery on display at the Paleozoological Museum of China shows that it was very small, about 70 centimeters long from head to tail, with curved claws that made them suitable for living in trees, and long flying feathers covering the limbs to form two pairs of wings. The latest research has found that many early primitive birds also had "four wings" like Gu's little thief. Australopithecus provides crucial evidence for the evolutionary theory that birds originated from dinosaurs.
△ Gu's small robber dragon orthographic specimen model
Xu Shilu Fenglong: "China's first dragon" is me!
The Xu's Lufeng Dragon specimen is the "treasure of the town hall" of the Chinese Paleozoological Museum, also known as the "First Dragon of China". Where does the "first" confidence come from?
First of all, Xu's Lufeng dragon lived in the early Jurassic period more than 200 million years ago, and was the earliest dinosaur of the era discovered in China.
Secondly, its skeleton fossils were found in Lufeng, Yunnan in 1938 and are very well preserved. In 1941, this skeleton fossil was mounted in Beibei, Chongqing, becoming the first dinosaur skeleton to be mounted by Chinese. The specimen of Xu's Lufeng dragon on display in the Dinosaur Corridor on the second floor of the Paleozoological Museum of China is the same skeleton that was exhibited in Chongqing 80 years ago.
△ Xu's Lufeng dragon skeleton exhibited in Chongqing Beibei in 1941
△ The skeleton of Xu's Lufeng dragon on display in the Chinese Paleozoological Museum
In 1958, the General Post Office of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of the People's Republic of China issued a set of three paleontological commemorative stamps, one of which was the skeleton and restoration of Xu's Lufeng dragon, which also became the world's first dinosaur to appear on the stamp.
△ Xu's Lu Fenglong stamp issued in 1958
Hechuan Mamenxi Dragon: My neck is the longest in the world!
Mammonsian is one of the largest dinosaurs in Asia and the longest-necked dinosaur in the world. Found in the Hechuan Mamenxi Dragon in Chongqing, the Hechuan Mamen Xilong has a neck length of 9 meters, from the first floor to the top of the second floor. The leg bone fossil of this "big guy" is 1.4 meters high and weighs 200 kilograms, which is the only fossil specimen in the museum that can be touched by hand. Scientists speculate that it eats at least 300 kilograms of plants a day, which can be described as a gentle "big foodie" in the dinosaur world.
△ Hechuan Mamenxi dragon model
There are so many ancient animals in the museum
Which one do you like the most?
What, haven't seen enough?
Come to the Chinese Paleozoological Museum
More animal evolutionary mysteries
Waiting for you to find out!
Producer | Li Dayong
Producer 丨 Wang Yu
Editor-in-chief 丨Li Wenting
Reporter 丨Jiang Haoyu
Camera 丨 Xu Yuzhao
Clip 丨 Yang Qing
Acknowledgements 丨 Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Paleozoological Museum