The rise of construction in China uncovers a buried dinosaur mine

YANJI, China – At the end of a newly built street of towers in Yanji City, in the north of China, lies an exposed cliff, where paleontologists search a stone 100 million years old. looking for prehistoric bones.

Like many fossil excavation sites in China, it was discovered by accident.

The rapid construction of the city in China has created a dinosaur fossil vein. While bulldozers have uncovered prehistoric sites in many countries, the scale and speed of Chinese urbanization is unprecedented, according to the UN Development Program.

Perhaps no one has grasped the scientific opportunity better than Xu Xing, sober and unpretentious flag bearer for China's new fame in paleontology. The researcher named more dinosaur species than any living paleontologist. He ran between the excavation sites to collect specimens and allowed scientists to better understand how birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Matthew Lamanna, curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, said that Xu is "widely regarded as one of the most important, if not the most important, paleontologist of dinosaurs working in China today."

Two years ago, Xu's colleague at the Beijing Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jin Changzhu, was visiting his family in Yanji when he heard about fossils discovered on a construction site. A preliminary inspection revealed what appeared to be a dinosaur shoulder bone.

Less than an hour's drive from the North Korean border, the mid-sized city quickly built residential blocks. Seen from an airplane, Yanji looks like a Legoland of new buildings with pink and blue roofs, but there is a long, empty lot of rocky hillsides exposed: the excavation site.

When Xu arrived in Yanji, he acknowledged that the site could fill the gaps in the fossil record, noting the relative scarcity of bones recovered from the Late Cretaceous period, about 100 million years ago. An badysis of the volcanic ash layers revealed the age of the site. Xu now supervises a team of scientists who use picks, scissors and needles to study the exposed hill.

The site delivered partial skeletons of three ancient crocodiles and a sauropod, a giant plant-eating dinosaur that included some of the world's largest land animals.

"This is a major feature of paleontology here in China: many works actually help scientists find new fossils," Xu said.

Born in 1969 in western China, in the Xinjiang region, Xu did not choose to study dinosaurs. Like most university students of his day, he was named major. His love for the field grew during the years of graduate school in the 1990s, as feathered dinosaurs recovered from ancient Chinese lake beds attracted worldwide attention.

When Xu and Jin discovered fossils in Yanji in 2016, city authorities suspended the construction of adjacent high-rise buildings, according to a national law.

"The developer was really not happy with me," said Xu, but the local government has since adopted its new celebrity status.

Christina Larson is an Associated Press Editor.