china

Laporte - Purdue North Central - Cooperative Expedition

Greetings from China! I have uploaded a few pictures to my web site so you can see what is going on here in Lufeng. The local people of Lufeng pronounce this county as "Lou Fong". This site has exceeded our wildest hopes. It may well be one of the largest dinosaur quarries ever found. In two weeks of actual excavation we have already found over two hundred fossil bones. Most of these are sauropod dinosaurs (the long-necked dinos). Our digging has only just scratched the surface and we have found quite a few specimens. The chinese scientists have uncovered what we think is a theropod (carnivorous) dinosaur of medium size. We have not identified any of the species that we have uncovered as yet.

For myself, I found a perfect specimen of a dinosaur starting with the tail. There is a lot of intact detail. Much of our problem is that this dinosaur has the characteristics from three completely different types of dinosaurs. Unfortunately, we do not have enough english scientific literature available here to determine just what this is. It may even be a new species - but this is work we must do upon returning to the U.S.A. Unusually, enough, it has been cooler here than expected, and we have gotten some rain and some snow - both unusual in this locality at this time of the year.

I will be back in the USA on Jan 25 or 26th depending on flight availability. See you later today on the Chat line

Dr. Hengst

=========== When you get done with these, I have three more pictures you might like to see from the end of the expedition

Here we are working on our new quarry - Day 1 about two hours into the original excavation. On the right is the Chinese excavation that was originally discovered by a member of the Notre Dame expedition two years ago. This is the first time we have been allowed back to even see the site! You can already see almost 15 bones uncovered and we've hardly begun.

Our first find, the prosauropod pelvis (ilium) that clearly defines this animal. We found large (6.5feet) scapulae (shoulder blade) bones only 8 feet away from here. Very Exciting!

This is a little hard to see bu look at the scale bar at the bottom of the picture. This is a single neck vertebra - length = 19 inches. Probably from a Mamenchisaurus.

Our local chinese farmers drilling to place dinamite. We had to use quite a bit of this to remove the rocks and "overburden" from the hill next to our quarry. Toward the end, it became quite dangerous and we had to quit earlier in the day to avoid having the hill collapse onto us.

Theropod vertebrae from the original chinese quarry site. We have not been able to positively identify this beast as yet.

An overhead view from the hill where the farmers were dynamiting. You can see parts of a scapula, a humerus (upper arm bone) and an ischium. Dr. Rigby is in the green coat, Dr. Edward Stumpe is in the middle and a Notre Dame Student, Josh Cahill have just begun uncovering things.

My Dinosaur!!. I found this tail while removing some of the upper layers of rock just below the area in the picture above. It turned out to be incredibly well defined and preserved. It may be a new species of sauropod dinosaur.

Details of the vertebral column. After a few days of work, we were able to remove a lot of the matrix. We found ribs, and chevrons (little bones under the tail). THis is the first chevron we found. What makes this unusual, is that this type of chevron has never been found with this particular type of dinosaur. The structure is characteristic of titanosaurs and a shunosaurus, but the forked chevron shown here ("U" shaped bone just above the scale bar) is normally associated with Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. We will have to sort this out at home!

Don't Forget, I have three more pictures for you to see - click here!

	Here we are working on our new quarry - Day 1 about two hours into the original excavation. On the right is the Chinese excavation that was originally discovered by a member of the Notre Dame expedition two years ago. This is the first time we have been allowed back to even see the site! You can already see almost 15 bones uncovered and we've hardly begun.
Our first find, the prosauropod pelvis (ilium) that clearly defines this animal. We found large (6.5feet) scapulae (shoulder blade) bones only 8 feet away from here. Very Exciting!
	This is a little hard to see bu look at the scale bar at the bottom of the picture. This is a single neck vertebra - length = 19 inches. Probably from a Mamenchisaurus.
Our local chinese farmers drilling to place dinamite. We had to use quite a bit of this to remove the rocks and "overburden" from the hill next to our quarry. Toward the end, it became quite dangerous and we had to quit earlier in the day to avoid having the hill collapse onto us.
	Theropod vertebrae from the original chinese quarry site. We have not been able to positively identify this beast as yet.
An overhead view from the hill where the farmers were dynamiting. You can see parts of a scapula, a humerus (upper arm bone) and an ischium. Dr. Rigby is in the green coat, Dr. Edward Stumpe is in the middle and a Notre Dame Student, Josh Cahill have just begun uncovering things.
	My Dinosaur!!. I found this tail while removing some of the upper layers of rock just below the area in the picture above. It turned out to be incredibly well defined and preserved. It may be a new species of sauropod dinosaur.
Details of the vertebral column. After a few days of work, we were able to remove a lot of the matrix. We found ribs, and chevrons (little bones under the tail). THis is the first chevron we found. What makes this unusual, is that this type of chevron has never been found with this particular type of dinosaur. The structure is characteristic of titanosaurs and a shunosaurus, but the forked chevron shown here ("U" shaped bone just above the scale bar) is normally associated with Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. We will have to sort this out at home!
Don't Forget, I have three more pictures for you to see - click here!