A Jurassic tyrant is crowned

摘要

Dinosaur research — and indeed a whole swathe of palaeontology — has been revolutionized by recent discoveries in China. Most famous are the feathered dinosaurs, early flowering plants, various mammals and other spectacular fossils from the 128- to 110-million-year-old lake deposits in Liaoning Province in the northeast. Less well studied, however, are the many-coloured badlands of Xinjiang on the far western side of the country. These rocks contain fossils dating to the beginning of the Late Jurassic epoch, roughly 161 million to 156 million years ago.