Dong Zhiming

Dong Zhiming ( Chinese  董枝明 ; born January 1937 in Weihai ) is a Chinese paleontologist , known as excavator of dinosaurs - fossils in China.

Dong Zhiming studied biology in Beijing and after graduating in 1962 went to the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing , at that time under the direction of the head of Chinese vertebrate paleontology, Yang Zhongjian . In 1963, he found his first dinosaur fossils (of sauropods ) in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region as part of a team of vertebrate paleontologists at the institute. During the Cultural Revolution from 1965 onwards he was sent to the countryside and later mapped in southern China. However, he kept in contact with the IVPP, whose work came to a standstill during the Cultural Revolution. In 1975 he happened upon a large dinosaur site from the middle Jurassic near Dashanpu on a construction site , where over 100 specimens were recovered, mostly from sauropods ( Shunosaurus , Datousaurus , Omeisaurus ). They date from a time when hardly any dinosaur fossils were found and when the sauropods began to develop into large forms. In 1980 the site was placed under nature protection and in 1987 a museum was opened at the site ( Zigong Dinosaur Museum ). Dong was now able to travel abroad and organized a joint Chinese-Canadian excavation project with Canadians Philip Currie and Dale Russell in 1985. They pushed in the Junggar Basin of Xinjiang region on a large Sauropodenfundstelle and were able to eleven new species described (such as Mamenchisaurus ). His findings also shed new light on the spread of dinosaurs from Asia to North America. He sees in the Archaeoceratops found by him a forerunner of the ceratopsian in North America like Triceratops of the chalk.

A predatory dinosaur, Sinraptor dongi , was named after him by Currie and others. For example, he himself named the Tianchiasaurus nedegoapeferima found on Lake Heaven in Tian Shan after the stars of the Jurassic Park film in recognition of a donation from Steven Spielberg to the IVPP.

In total, he found (and described) 18 new species of dinosaurs in excavations in China up to 1997, using unconventional methods (blasting) in the hard sandstones of China for Western paleontologists as well.

In 2000 he became an honorary member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology .

He is married and has a son and a daughter.

Fonts

• Dinosaurs from China , British Museum of Natural History, London 1988
• Dinosaurian Faunas of China , China Ocean Press, Beijing 1992

Web links

• Martin Williams Unearthing China´s real dragons , Readers Digest 1997 ( Memento from February 14, 2001 in the Internet Archive )

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Dong is the family name here, Zhiming is the first name.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ One of the species he named Gasosaurus constructus , as the construction site for the parking lot of an oil and gas company was.