Touchable fossils on display on site. Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
Hangzhou, January 8 (Tong Xiaoyu) More than 2 million years ago, what creatures lived on the earth? How are they different from today's animals? On January 8th, the "Legend of Ancient Beasts - Dalian Quaternary Paleontological Fossils Special Exhibition" opened in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.
Co-organized by the Zhejiang Natural History Museum and the Dalian Natural History Museum, the exhibition exhibits more than 200 Quaternary specimens, including animal fossils such as Dalian horses, giant chin tigers, and Deninger cave bears, reproducing the past and present lives of Quaternary paleontology in Dalian.
In order to study the history of the development of the earth, scientists divide the 4.6 billion years of the earth into geological age units such as zeus, generation, era, epoch, and period. The Quaternary is the latest in the long history of earth's development, which began 2.58 million years ago and continues to this day.
Fossils of Dalian horse skeletons on display at the scene. Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
Walking into the exhibition hall, the first thing you see is a fossil skeleton of a Dalian horse nearly one person tall. Dalian horses belong to large wild horses, mainly living in the Quaternary Late Pleistocene, dating back about 17,000 years, so named after the first discovery at the Site of Dalian Gulongshan.
According to Liu Sizhao, an associate researcher at the Research Department of dalian natural history museum, the skeleton of Dalian horse is basically the same as that of living horses, but the body is 1/4 to 1/3 larger. The "Gulongshan people" may have mainly hunted Dalian horses at that time. Scientists speculate that the extinction of dalian horses may have a certain relationship with human hunting in addition to environmental changes.
In addition to the Dalian horse, another fossil exhibited at the scene also proves that tens of thousands of years ago, there may be traces of ancient human life in the Dalian area.
The cement lumps on display at the scene are the teeth of wild boar in the upper left corner. Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
Through the display cases, you can see a large pile of bones wrapped in dirt. They have different shapes, but they are all densely packed together. This pile of bones is called, in technical terms, "cement clumps."
"According to the analysis, these bones are mainly fossils of deer and pigs." Liu Sizhao pointed to the upper left corner of the fossil, which was two rows of neat teeth from wild boars. She said that naturally, fossils preserved in the shi layer will not be so broken, and even if they are broken, there will not be so many broken bones.
In addition, archaeologists have also found a large number of fragments of bone and quartz sandstone that does not appear in the limestone formation. Based on these phenomena, they analyzed that the dense cementitious clumps of the animal bones were likely caused by human factors, that is, the ancient humans discarded the bones in the cave after eating the animal flesh, or left behind after the ancients knocked the bone and sucked the marrow.
Exhibition site. Photo by Tong Xiaoyu
Fossils of Nord's camels are also exhibited at the site. Compared to modern camels, its skull is quite large and its face is slightly longer.
Liu Sizhao said that the Nord's camel is a kind of Bactrian camel, the largest species in the known camel family Camel genus, with a shoulder height of up to 2.6 meters, mainly living in grassland and forest-grassland environments. After the extinction of the Nord's camel, it was replaced by a relatively small Bactrian camel.
It is worth mentioning that in the exhibition, not only can you enjoy various rare paleontological fossil specimens from the Quaternary period in Dalian, but also view the video data of the field excavation research of Dalian Luotuo Mountain. The exhibition also provides the audience with touchable fossil specimens, allowing the audience to have a direct "dialogue" with animals in ancient times.
It is reported that the exhibition was held at the Zhejiang Natural History Museum and lasted until April 7. (End)