Discovery of a new dinosaur - page 1
A discovery by stages
The River Amur forms the natural border between China en Russia. The frontier was a heavily disputed area between those countries and armed conflicts were frequent. The Russian army was thus present and one of its colonels discovered the first dinosaur bones in Jiayin, a district on the Chinese riverbank, but thought they were remains of mammoths. The Russian Geological Survey carried out new excavations in 1915 and 1916 and Russian palaeontologists described several new dinosaur species found in the same site, that remained completely abandoned since.
It was not until the 1980s that several Chinese teams resumed the excavations in Jiayin and discovered many more dinosaur bones. In the early 2000's these bones were finally studied, in particular by palaeontologists of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. Near the city of Blagoveschensk, on the other side of the river, Russian palaeontologists discovered other dinosaur sites and unearthed many hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur) bones.
Presuming the dinosaur sites in the Amur area might be very important, the palaeontologists of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences established a collaboration with their colleagues in Blagoveschensk, and a joint exploration in 1999 resulted in the discovery of a significant site in Kundur.
Sponsored by the National Geographic Society, a Belgo-Russian excavation team could be set up in 2001, and among its important discoveries was an almost complete skeleton of a new hadrosaur, named Olorotitan arharensis ((click here for an image) (this will open in a new window)). The same team was able to continue its explorations in 2003, thanks to the financial support of the Belgian Federal Science Policy. This year the same site yielded several dinosaur skeletons, including one of a hitherto unknown species. This skeleton was about three metres high and eight metres long.
Biodiversity in the dinosaur era
This discovery is consequential for palaeontologists and for our understanding of the history of the Earth. It emphasizes that the vast biodiversity of the dinosaurs at the time of their extinction, which implicates it was probably sudden and abrupt (see on these pages: "Is the Earth going to suffocate us?" by Jean_Georges Casier). Until now field research on the extinction of the dinosaurs has been done mainly in Montana (USA). The Montana sites, that yielded the Triceratops, date from the same period as Kundur. But those were not the only ones to reign the Earth 65 million years ago...
Do you want to know more about dinosaurs, palaeontologists and their work, the history of the excavations etc? Feel free to order our book Dinosaures. Du chantier de fouilles au Muséum (french) or Dinosauriërs. Van vindplaats tot Museum (dutch) (Euros 12,50).
You find it in our shop, or you can order it at orders@naturalsciences.be.
