Gansu Province Museum?s Nature Department recently discovered a fossilized dinosaur egg. Experts say the discovery, together with the many fossilized prehistoric bones and footprints found before it, proves that many dinosaurs once roamed Gansu Province. Gansu may reasonably be called a dinosaur kingdom of that time.
According to Zhang Xing, a researcher at the Gansu Museum, says it?s the first time a whole dinosaur egg has been found in Gansu. The egg is almost perfectly complete, expect for a small blemish where a piece of shell has broken off the bottom, probably damaged by geological movement during the process of fossilization. The small white blemish is thought to be the result of a small fraction of bone. Estimates, drawn from the surroundings, suggest that the egg was laid on the side of a hill with a 30-degree incline.
In recent years, archeologists have found whole dinosaur fossils of Psittacosaurus, Probactrosaurus, Nanshiungosaurus, Ancient Ceratopsians and other rare species in northwestern Gansu?s Hexi Corridor (so called because of its location to the west of the Yellow River). On the Loess Plateau of central Gansu, scientists discovered the largest Sauropodomorphs in Asia, and a number of hydrosaur, megalosauridae and pterosaur fossils. Last March, geologists found the largest collection of footprints in the world alongside the Yellow River in Yongjing County, Gansu.
Zhang Xing pointed out, that although many dinosaur fossils have been found in Gansu before, it?s the first time a dinosaur egg has been discovered in the area, leading to a ?triunity? of a fossilized dinosaur skeleton, footprint and egg. This is rare in China.
By examining the fossils, Zhang Xing deducts that 100 million years ago, the Hexi area was characterized by a warm and humid climate with many bodies of water and no clear distinction between the four seasons. The Qingyang and Tongwei areas once had wide lakes. In Gansu, all kinds of dinosaurs flew in air, swam in the water and ran on the land. It was a dinosaur kingdom.
(China.org.cn by Chen Lin December 27, 2002)
