Lingnan Prehistoric History: The World's Greatest Dinosaurs

What is Lingnan?

Since the Yanshan Movement formed the Wuling Mountains more than 200 million years ago in the Mesozoic Era, the south of the Wuling Mountains is Lingnan. Therefore, Lingnan refers to the red land south of the Wuling Mountains formed in the Mesozoic Era, including the three provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan today.

Dinosaur bones, relics and remains have been discovered in many areas of Lingnan, including Shaoguan, Nanxiong, Heyuan, Sanshui, Foshan, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Huizhou, Meizhou, Maoming, Zhongshan, Nanning, Fusui, Chongzuo, Baise and Hechi.

Dinosaurs once dominated the Mesozoic Era, so the Mesozoic Era is called the "Age of Dinosaurs". The Mesozoic Era in Earth history includes the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, which lasted from 240 million years ago to 65 million years ago. Dinosaurs lived and multiplied on Earth for more than 170 million years, and suddenly became extinct 65 million years ago!

How are dinosaurs classified?

Scientifically, dinosaurs are divided into sauropods and ornithischians based on the characteristics of their lumbar belts.

Sauropods are further divided into two subcategories: theropods and sauropods.

Ornithischians are further divided into five subdivisions: ornithopods, pachycephalosaurs, ceratopsians, stegosaurians, and ankylosaurs.

Dinosaur eggs are classified according to morphology. They are divided into round eggs, oblate eggs, oval eggs, long eggs, and long oval eggs.

Dinosaur bones and egg fossils were found in the Sihui-Sanshui-Guangzhou Basin. Fossils of Oviraptor were found in Sihui. Dinosaur eggs and dinosaur bone fossils were found in Sanshui. Dinosaur egg fossils were found in Baihe Cave, Martyrs Cemetery, Quzhuang, Sanyuanli, Liuhua Lake, Jixiang Road, Lianxin Road, Guangta Road, Haizhu District, Liwan District, Panyu District, Nansha District and other places in Guangzhou.

Heyuan: Hometown of Chinese Dinosaurs. Heyuan is a national key protected dinosaur fossil production area. Heyuan won the Guinness record of "World's Largest Dinosaur Egg Collection" with 10,388 dinosaur eggs. The dinosaur eggs with snow-white mineral crystals produced in Heyuan have become another wonder of the world.

Heyuan has become a world dinosaur wonder with the discovery of 8 dinosaur skeleton fossils, 10,388 dinosaur egg fossils and 168 dinosaur footprint fossils!

Nanxiong: The world's largest dinosaur!

It is the most classic area for red bed and dinosaur research in the world!

Therefore, the 90 layers of dinosaur egg fossils preserved at the end of the Cretaceous period are the largest in the world! (Zhang Xianqiu, 2019)

It has the most highly researched, most detailed and best standard stratigraphic section of the K/T boundary in China.

It is the birthplace of the most complete dinosaur eggs with embryos in the world!

It contains the world's rarest Tyrannosaurus, Tarbosaurus sp., and carnivorous dinosaur fossils!

Nanning-Fusui in Guangxi is the place where the "Fusui Chinese Dragon" was discovered in 1973.

In 2001, the world wonder of "three dragons in one nest" was discovered here! Among them, the "Zhao's Fusuisaurus" (sauropod) is the best preserved and the tallest in the world! It is six meters tall and more than twenty meters long. It is now in the Guangxi Natural History Museum.

New discovery in China: Chinese scholars have found that many dinosaur eggshells in Lingnan have feather-like structures, pointing out that this is a sign of the evolution of dinosaur eggs into bird eggs, proving that birds evolved from dinosaurs! This has solved the world's nearly 100-year-old question about the origin of birds! Dinosaurs are not really extinct, and their descendants - birds are now flying in the sky!

The mystery of dinosaur extinction is the subject of endless international academic debate.

American scholars have discovered 70 KT boundaries around the world, in which the celestial substance iridium is abnormally high. Based on this, they believe that a celestial body hit the earth, raising dust that blocked the sunlight and killed plants, leading to the extinction of dinosaurs.

Erben from Germany studied the Nanxiong KT boundary and believed that it can be compared with the global boundaries of Germany, Canada, Italy and Spain. The extinction of dinosaurs was a sudden climate change in the early Paleogene. The impact hypothesis is not supported.

St. Mary's University in the United States and China University of Geosciences jointly surveyed the KT boundary in Nanxiong and found a 6-10 cm layer of volcanic ash. Based on this, they believed that the dinosaurs became extinct due to a volcanic eruption.

Chinese scholar Zhao Zikui studied the eggshells of Nanxiong dinosaurs and discovered pathological characteristics and enrichment of trace elements. Based on this, he proposed that dinosaurs became extinct 200,000 to 300,000 years before the KT boundary and 250,000 years after this boundary, and that the extinction was caused by the concentration of harmful elements leading to environmental deterioration.

The current mainstream view in international academic circles is still the impact hypothesis, which states that the extinction of dinosaurs was caused by a celestial body hitting the earth, which was a natural disaster!