Chongqing >> Dinosaur Fossil Museum

Attraction Typ: Historic Site

Location: about 180 km from city

Recommend: 4 Star

Dinosaur Fossil Museum

Dinosaur Fossil Museum is the first specialized dinosaur museum in China and one of the world's three largest dinosaur museums. More over, it has the world's largest collection of dinosaur fossils from the mid-Jurassic Period.

Dinosaur Fossil Museum (Chinese: 恐龙化石博物馆; pinyin: Kǒnglóng Huàshí Bówù Guǎn) is the first specialized dinosaur museum in China and one of the world's three largest dinosaur museums. It is located in Dashanpu at Zigong City, about 180 kilometers from Chongqing.

As a famous saying goes, one finds a veritable nest of dinosaurs at Zigong. There are more than forty locations within the city at which dinosaur fossils from different eras have been found. A very considerable amount of fossilized dinosaurs has been excavated here and other vertebrate fossils have been found as well at the same sites.

A great quantity and diversity of types of buried fossil is found here, including specimens that are quite rare and relatively well preserved. It was discovered in 1972. The fossils are in a sandy layer of the Meso-Jurassic period. At present, only about twenty percent of excavated dinosaurs in the world belong to the Jurassic period, and most of these are from the late Jurassic, lacking the early and middle stages that show how dinosaurs evolved.

The exhibition of the museum is divided into three parts. Part one introduces general knowledge about fossils, botanical evolution, geologic periods and the evolution of dinosaurs and species extinctions. Part two introduces the group of dinosaurs from Dashanpu. Part three is an actual site of dinosaur burials. This has dinosaur bones in their original setting. Observers can look down from a railing above, but can also go down into an underground room and touch the fossils of ancient life, see the circumstances of the layers and the ores, understand the wonders and marvels of the creations of nature.