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China’s Feathered Dinosaurs
The Excavation Site
deposited in a lake that existed 120 million years ago in Liaoning Province in northeastern China.
Professional paleontologists and local villagers have excavated fossils of millions of leaves, insects, fish,
frogs, salamanders, mammals, turtles, lizards and crocodilians from these rocks, but the most extraordinary
finds to date have been the remains of feathered dinosaurs. Liaoning farmer Li Yin Fang is the discoverer
of Sinosauropteryx prima (“first Chinese dragon feather”), found at Sihetun in 1996. Local farmers and
scientists from China and around the world have been excavating the site since 1994.
The feathered dinosaur fossils were deposited in a lakebed in Liaoning Province in what is now northeastern
China. Over 100 million years ago this area teemed with life; volcanic ashfall from eruptions in Inner Mongolia
to the west covered many of these living things, preserving them almost perfectly. Because these beds have
been overturned, going deeper at the site means coming closer to the present in time.