Dinosaurs in China
Notes from MNS Paleontologists
Over the last few decades the study of Chinese dinosaurs has skyrocketed. The reasons for escalation in global stature stem from a commitment by the government to investigate vast regions of previously unexplored rocks in China, combined with discoveries of exquisitely preserved dinosaur remains. Whereas issues surrounding the true diversity in dinosaurs may develop, most paleontologists would agree that the most significant contribution China has made for improving our understanding dinosaurs lies in the discovery of so many exquisite dinosaur skeletons with feather impressions. These spectacular discoveries have deepened our understanding of evolutionary relationships between groups of dinosaurs and furthered our understanding of dinosaur physiology. Plus the artists have had a field day reconsidering what dinosaurs may have looked like.
The Chinese record is important because they have extensive deposits of the right kind and ages in a series of continental basins where lots of sediment accumulated and lots of things died - an accident of prehistory and geology. There's been a great increase in our knowledge of certain forms, including important parts of the evolutionary story of dinosaurs and other groups that many Chinese fossils have provided - in part because some of the big bone-bearing sites are of an age that was poorly represented by sediments elsewhere in the world. Therefore, those Chinese deposits and fossils have helped fill some gaps for us. Also, there are a couple of sites that have remarkable preservation, including an area that has produced numerous skeletons of birds and non-bird dinosaurs that preserve traces of their feathers around the skeleton. That's gone a long way in changing our idea of 'the look' of dinosaurs. That's only come up since about 1996 or so, and new things are being found every now and again. So, the Chinese specimens that have been found in the last 30-plus years or so have made important contributions, some shifting our paradigms about aspects of dinosaurs and the rise of birds from among certain dinosaur lines.
