Dinosaur footprints from 100 million years ago were discovered on the outdoor patio of a restaurant in southwest China, revealing the presence of ancient artifacts in the region. Paleontologists found the footprints of two sauropods in the outdoor courtyard of the restaurant in Leshan, Sichuan province. Sauropods were a type of dinosaur that lived in the early Cretaceous period. The footprints were covered with dirt to protect them from weather damage.
Paleontologist Shares How His Team Discovers the Sauropod Dinosaur in China
Paleontologist Lida Xing, an associate professor at the China University of Geosciences, confirmed the discovery on Saturday using a 3D scanner, he wrote in an email to USA TODAY. According to Xing, China's rapid industrialization and ongoing construction have made it difficult for paleontologists to study fossils, making the discovery at the restaurant more unusual. His team concentrated on making site visits within 48 hours after learning about a report before another construction took place.
The business owner has currently walled off the area in the courtyard to prevent people from obstructing the footprints. The footprints of the dinosaurs that once roamed the Earth discovered in the restaurant were about 26 feet long.
The well-known brontosaurus is one of the sauropod species distinguished by their long necks and tails. According to studies from the University of California, Berkeley, they are thought to be the biggest creatures to have ever walked the Earth, measuring three school buses in length.
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Previous Dinosaur Discoveries in China
In an August 2021 report published in Nature Scientific Reports, three separate dinosaur fossils from the Early Cretaceous period, roughly 130 to 120 million years ago, were discovered in the Turpan-Hami Basin in northwest China.
According to the scientists, there had never been any reports of dinosaur fossils in the area.
The first specimen found is Silutitan sinensis, a new species of herbivorous sauropod with a very long neck, long tail, huge body, and small skull. The dinosaur was discovered to have some traits in its neck vertebrae that suggested it belonged to the Euhelopodidae family of sauropods, which has only ever been seen in East Asia. Scientists estimate that the sauropod was more than 65 feet long.
The second species, called Hamititan xinjiangensis, was more like the sauropods found in South America and was believed to have been over 55 feet long. The third species is suspected to be a somphospondylan sauropod, a group of dinosaurs from the late Jurassic period, roughly 66 million years ago.
An armored dinosaur (Thyreophora) known as Yuxisaurus kopchicki, which lived 200 million years ago in what is now Southwest China's Yunnan Province, was presented in March 2022 on the eLife website.
Another discovery was published on Yingliang Group Website of the so-called Ying Baby, which is China's best-preserved duckbill dragon embryo. It is 72 to 66 million years old and considered the most complete and best-preserved fossilized embryo of its kind yet identified by science.
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