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Cretaceous dinosaur fossils found in NE China

Xinhua, June 3, 2016 Adjust font size:

Paleontologists say fossils unearthed from a building site in northeast China's Jilin Province could be the bones of dinosaurs that lived over 100 million years ago.

The fossils are likely those of iguanodons, a massive herbivorous bipedal dinosaur with a long heavy tail, which were common in Europe some 140 million to 120 million years ago, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

"The excavation site matches the typical characteristics of the stratum in early Cretaceous period," said Zang Hailong of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the CAS.

Zang said the dinosaur could be around 10 meters long based on a one-meter femur bone discovered at the site.

Photos of the fossils were uploaded to WeChat by a local dinosaur fan in Yanji City, where the fossils were found, and caught the attention of paleontologists in Beijing.

The area has been cordoned off. Archaeologists have not ruled out the possibility of unearthing a complete skeleton. Endi