"Li Cunxiao beat the tiger"
It is the Maling Mountain Scenic Area of Xinyi City, Xuzhou
A famous tourist attraction
There's a "human footprint" and a "tiger paw print" here.
Legend has it that he was the first fierce general at the end of the Tang Dynasty
The imprint left by Li Cunxiao when he beat the tiger
Recently, though, these footprints
It has been confirmed by Paleontologists in China and the United States as dinosaur footprints
Other words
In the Xinyi area of Xuzhou hundreds of millions of years ago
There have been dinosaurs living!
The first to find these footprints suspected of being "dinosaur footprints" was Wang Yangzi, a graduate student at Hainan Normal University, a native of Qipan Town, Xinyi City.
After seeing some news reports of dinosaur footprints in Maling Mountain, he speculated that the footprints of Xinyi's "Li Cunxiao Fighting Tiger Place" were similar to dinosaur footprints, and got in touch with paleontologist and geologist Xing Lida through social media.
Xing Lida, associate professor at China University of Geosciences, paleontologist, founder of China's first dinosaur website. The "net red" scientist, who has more than 3 million fans on Weibo, interacts with "dinosaur enthusiasts" almost every day through Weibo, and while answering some questions, he will also receive various clues from netizens. Among the many clues, Wang Yangzi's photo made Xing Lida's eyes shine.
Lida Xing is an associate professor and paleontologist at China University of Geosciences
"I have always been very concerned about the connection between folklore and dinosaur footprints, and I was very excited when I saw the photos provided by Wang Yangzi, which are typical dinosaur footprints," Xing Lida recalled, "The spacing of dinosaur tracks in this area is very regular, the pattern is clear, and the claw marks are obvious, which is the characteristic of typical carnivorous dinosaur footprints." Xing Lida then organized experts and scholars to come to investigate twice.
Theropod dinosaur tracer
Why would Professor Xing Lida think that Wang Yangzi provided dinosaur footprints? It turned out that as early as the 1980s, paleontologists and geologists found a number of dinosaur footprint fossils in the Mesozoic Cretaceous strata of Maling Mountain, in 2009, Xing Lida and other experts and scholars published the first dinosaur footprint paper in the area, and carried out several investigations, and successively found a number of important footprint points.
Last year, they found a large dinosaur footprint in the Malingshan area of Tancheng, Shandong Province. In order to rigorously examine the evidence, Xing Lida organized a team of experts and came to the Xinyi Maling Mountain Scenic Area twice for on-site examination. On June 16 this year, Xing Lida and a team of experts from Chinese and American paleontologists officially announced that a total of four dinosaur footprints had been found in the Malingshan area of Xinyi City, two of which were the "tiger paw prints" and "human footprints" that had long been interpreted as "Li Cunxiao's tiger", that is, in the Xinyi area about 100 million years ago, there were a number of dinosaurs living!
Xing Lida said: "First of all, the location is very important, it belongs to the MalingShan Mountain Range, and all the slightly larger pits in the MalingShan Mountains may be very related to dinosaurs." This newly discovered point in Maling Mountain, in addition to its claw marks are very clear, it is also very regular, if it is done manually, it may not be so exquisite and serious. It is also very old, just like the rest of Maling Mountain, it belongs to the early Cretaceous Period, about 100 million years ago. ”
Xing Lida said that the discovery is of great significance for studying the distribution and evolution of dinosaur fauna in the early Cretaceous period in China, as well as the influence of folklore on paleontology. At present, the research is jointly studied by Xing Lida and paleontologists at home and abroad, and the paper is published in the well-known geological journal "Geological Bulletin" in China.
Reporter / Xuzhoutai Dong Shiyin Zhang Yun promised Xu Han
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