Meet the 'Chinosaurs': How China is helping transform dinosaur science

On February 20, 1824, English naturalist William Buckland addressed the Geological Society of London. He was describing an enormous fossil of a jawbone found in an Oxford slate mine. 

Believing it belonged to a huge bygone reptile, he called it Megalosaurus, meaning "great lizard." This revelation kicked off two centuries of fascination with dinosaurs. 

Since then dinosaur science, or paleontology, has flourished. Buckland believed his fossil to be a few thousand years old but now it is estimated that dinosaurs walked the earth between 231 million to 66 million years ago during the Mesozoic Era. 

It was English naturalist Richard Owen, naming a group of fossils in 1842, who coined the term "Dinosauria" - and this is the name that stuck.

Children and adults alike remain fascinated by these creatures: what they looked like, where they lived and what happened to them. We now know of more than 2,000 species of dinosaurs from all over the world and much has been discovered, says Fion Waisum Ma, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. 

"In the early days of the study of dinosaurs, people were more focused on understanding what these creatures are, studying their anatomy - what is their body form?," Ma tells CGTN. "They were also trying to classify them into different groups and how they relate to other prehistoric or modern organisms." 

More recently, the focus of paleontology has evolved to a broader picture of how these creatures interacted with their surrounding environment and related to different key events in history.

"Scientists are more focused on understanding how dinosaurs lived their lives, what was their biology and how they interacted with other organisms," says Ma.

China's contribution to dinosaur science

The science of paleontology was given an incredible boost in 1996 when on a hillside in Sihetun, Liaoning Province, a Chinese farmer stumbled onto the world's first known feathered dinosaur. The creature is now known as Sinosauropteryx - literally, China winged reptile - and the discovery led to a gold rush of fossil-finding that has turned China into the new center of paleontology.

"China is a treasure trove of dinosaur fossils, especially north-eastern China," says Ma. "There are rocks that are really good at preserving soft tissue."

Chinese sites have now given the world more than 40 new dinosaurs and crucial information about how they lived and interacted with other creatures - transforming our understanding of this mysterious period of evolution. These finds have also been crucial to the theory that some dinosaurs are actually still with us.

"There are a lot of feathered dinosaurs found in Liaoning province," Ma explains. "So, these fossils have provided solid evidence that the modern birds were actually closely related to dinosaurs and, in fact, they are the descendants of the extinct dinosaurs." 

That's not the only thing to excite dinosaur enthusiasts. The explosion in fossils has led to more dinosaur museums to house these scientific wonders. 

"Recently, one of the largest natural history museums in Asia was opened in Hebei," says Ma, who enthuses that the Baoding Natural History Museum "showcases a lot of scientifically important specimens. For example, the earliest fish with a jaw and also some dinosaur eggs from the western part of China. And, of course, a lot of dinosaur fossils."

The Baoding Natural History Museum promises to be an important site for science outreach and for researchers from China to study these important fossils.

"Because of those fossils, a lot of foreign researchers are attracted to China to visit the fossil localities and to develop collaborations with China," says Ma. "At the same time, Chinese researchers are also traveling to visit fossil localities, do fieldwork and also to attend conferences which is really good for the development of paleontology."

Ma herself has been part of an exciting discovery in southern China - the best preserved dinosaur embryo ever found.

"By studying it, we were able to understand the posture that a dinosaur embryo had before it hatched. So it tells us a lot about the reproductive biology of dinosaurs and also how the biology of dinosaurs is similar to what we see in modern birds."

Extinction theories still puzzle scientists

In 1980, researchers announced evidence that an asteroid had struck Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. The Chicxulub crater at Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula was identified as the impact site that wiped out three-quarters of Earth's species including the dinosaurs.

However, recent Chinese discoveries have revealed that extinction is not as cut and dried as once thought. 

"Some dinosaurs are still living today, and most of us can see them every day - they are birds," says Ma. "Those are the only dinosaurs that didn't go extinct during the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period. 

"So an interesting question to think about is why and how the birds survived the mass extinction. What made them unique among dinosaurs and eventually helped them survive?"

Scientists are looking at their body size, their diet, or a combination of many factors. One of the many hypotheses is based on pathologies, as fossil evidence shows that dinosaurs did suffer from sickness, just like humans. Things like bone fractures, infections and cancers have been documented in some dinosaurs.

However, it is believed unlikely to be the primary driver of the extinction. Ma confirms there is still a lot to learn.

"Until now, we still haven't found solid evidence of DNA in dinosaur fossils. No matter if it's for the detection of viruses, or reviving the extinct dinosaurs in a Jurassic Park style, it remains a science fiction."

The role of technology

Much research is needed to get a clearer picture of what happened 66 million years ago, but technology promises to speed up this process.

"Nowadays, scientists use a variety of new techniques to study fossils, which allows us to understand aspects that were previously unknown," explains Ma. "One of the techniques that I really like is CT scanning."

Similar to a CT scan in a hospital, the CT technology used in paleontology has a much higher resolution. More and more research institutes around the world now have their own CT scanners, which is very useful for scientists like Ma to share each other's discoveries.

"Our specimens don't have to leave the building - we can do the scanning within the university or within the museum," she says. "And with CT scanning, we can look inside the fossils without prepping the rocks out, which is really handy for us to look at the internal anatomy of dinosaurs."

As with other branches of science, many processes in fossil research are repetitive. AI therefore promises to help with the processing of the CT scan data, saving scientists a lot of time which can then be spent on analysis. With all these advancements in technology, Ma has a personal goal she would like to achieve.

"I really hope to discover the first dinosaur fossil in Hong Kong," she reveals. "People always think of Hong Kong as a city full of buildings, but in fact there are quite a lot of country park areas. And some of the rocks in the country park areas were actually formed in the age of dinosaurs… 

"So far we haven't found any dinosaur fossils in those rocks but I'm really hopeful about such a possibility, because similar rocks in nearby Shenzhen have yielded several dinosaur eggs. So I believe discovering dinosaur eggs or even skeletons in Hong Kong is just a matter of time."

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