The Museum at the Niuheliang Site
2 min readOnly a few minutes after stepping off the plane or walking out of the train station,a traveler to China is inundated with ancient culture.
The Roar of Dinosaurs
Only a few minutes after stepping off the plane or walking out of the train station,a traveler to China is inundated with ancient culture. Liaoning Province is rich with ancient culture, but just how far back requires rewinding a bit on the old timeline. Rewinding back a few million years to the Mesozoic period, some 130 million years into the past is just how old we are talking about. Here, as many scientists and even the publication National Geographic have called Liaoning Province, Cretaceous Pompeii, is a hotbed of primordial plants and animals. Linking Liaoning Province to the ancient city covered by hot ash from the volcanic explosion of Mount Vesuvius is not far off as Liaoning is home to many volcanoes.
Volcanoes have often served as geographic and geological markers for many large prehistoric plant and animal discoveries. While Pompeii gave scientists insight into more recent culture and human sociology, the layers of ash and earth created layers upon layers of solidified rock that allow scientists to peel back the fabric of history to discover what the world before time was like. Presently almost 60 different types of plants species, almost 90 species of vertebrates and additionally almost 300 different invertebrates have been unearthed from the rock. The unique type of volcanic eruption, less monumental geyser-like explosions that grace the screens of disaster movies, but longer periods of volcanic activity that rained down hot ash preserved entire organisms, many with full skeletons and even fossilized feathers still visible today in the hardened shale stone.
When visiting sites like the Liaoning Chaoyang Bird Fossil National Geopark, just outside of the city of Chaoyang, you can step down into the first pit where the exciting discoveries were made. When we are in school learning about dinosaurs, the comparison to layers upon layers is often made but here in the Geopark it is overwhelming just how manylayers you can see. Small slices not much thicker than a finger width or less of shale and other rock piled high upon each other representing millions of years of time passing are so easy to see that it almost seems unreal. You are not allowed to but you want to reach out and pull out a chunk of history like removing a book from the shelf, and scientists have found that it is just that easy and that exciting for their research.
