By Ariana Eunjung ChaTuesday, January 26, 2010
ZHUCHENG, CHINA -- What killed the dinosaurs? Scientist Wang Haijun thinks the answer may be buried inside a 980-foot-long ravine in the Chinese countryside 415 miles southeast of Beijing where hundreds of the creatures may have huddled in the final moments before their extinction.
The fossils here -- more than 15,000 fractured, mangled and blackened bones from about 65 million years ago in the late Cretaceous period right before they went extinct -- support theories of a catastrophe. Global fires. Explosions. Climate change.
"This find is very important for understanding the very end of the age of dinosaurs," said James M. Clark, a paleontologist at George Washington University who has examined some of the fossils.
The excavation here, believed to be the largest dinosaur fossil site in the world, is one of a number of groundbreaking research projects in a country that once shunned science because it was associated with the elites.
As a construction boom sweeps through China, workers digging into the ground and clearing forests for highways and high-rises are inadvertently stumbling upon relics that are rewriting our understanding of the distant past. The Chinese government, which during the Cultural Revolution in 1966-76 was responsible for dismantling scientific research institutions, banishing many intellectuals to farms and systematically destroying historical artifacts, is now throwing billions of dollars into projects in archaeology, historical ecology and paleontology.
The excavation here, believed to be the largest dinosaur fossil site in the world, is one of a number of groundbreaking research projects in a country that once shunned science because it was associated with the elites.
As a construction boom sweeps through China, workers digging into the ground and clearing forests for highways and high-rises are inadvertently stumbling upon relics that are rewriting our understanding of the distant past. The Chinese government, which during the Cultural Revolution in 1966-76 was responsible for dismantling scientific research institutions, banishing many intellectuals to farms and systematically destroying historical artifacts, is now throwing billions of dollars into projects in archaeology, historical ecology and paleontology.
...
Read more here/Leia mais aqui: The Washington Post
