Labels:text | font | paper | document OCR: The first scientific fossil-collecting expeditions took place in China in the early 1900s, but "dragon bones" were found in Chinese drugstores long before that. Johann Gunnar Andersson (1874-1960), a Swedish geologist and fossil enthusiast who traveled in China between 1914 and 1924, recognized that the "dragon bones" belonged to extinct animals. Together with Austrian scientist Otto Zdansky and Chinese geologist H. C. T'an, he found some of the sources of these bones. SICHUAN PROVINCE The fossil-rich beds of Sichuan Province, south-central China, have produced the most continuous record of dinosaurs from the Jurassic Period (208-144 MYA) in the world. Mamenchisaurus was excavated by Young Chung Chien (1897-1979) in 1952. Tuojiangosaurus, a new type of stegosaur (four-legged plant-eater with plates or spines running down the neck, back, and tail) was found at Wujiaba Quarry and named by Dong Zhiming, China's leading modern fossil scientist. Both Mamenchisaurus and Tuojiangosaurus are from Jurassic beds. Many fossils dating from the middle of the Jurassic Period have been found at the Dashanpu Quarry site. Dong Zhiming was asked to excavate this quarry in 1979, after a construction team had struck dinosaur bones. The site has since produced more than 100 dinosaur skeletons, including more than 20 specimens of Shunosaurus. BRITISH-CHINESE EXPEDITION Chinese dinosaurs became known worldwide in the 1980s after digs by teams that involved British, American, or Canadian scientists and Chinese colleagues. Dong Zhiming and British dinosaur expert Angela Milner wrote the first popular book in English on Chinese dinosaurs and from 1986 to 1990 the China-Canada Dinosaur Project unearthed new dinosaurs in northwest China. But Chinese scientists in Liaoning Province made the great finds of the 1990s: Early Cretaceous birdlike dinosaurs covered in downy feathers.
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