Saturday July 6, 2002 saw the opening at the Australian Museum of the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of Chinese dinosaurs ever to travel south of the Equator. To date, it has attracted more visitors to the Australian Museum than any previous exhibition, with a record 50,000-plus visitors pouring in during the month of July alone.

The opening at the AM in July marked the end of an exciting two-year journey to bring the Chinosaurs 'Down Under'. In December 1999, Michael Wong of the Hong Kong Science Museum, on behalf of a consortium of Chinese regional museums, approached Australian Museum Director Mike Archer about an exhibition of some of the very best dinosaur material found in China. A similar exhibition was doing very well at the Hong Kong Science Museum. On offer were many real dinosaur skeletons as well as other reptiles, birds, plants, insects, and so on. Most of the material would be exhibited in Australia for the very first time. In 1982, two Chinese dinosaurs, Mamenchisaurus and Tsintaosaurus, had been exhibited at the Australian Museum and the Museum of Victoria and were big crowd-pleasers.

Negotiations began immediately and in April 2000, Mike and I (with our two daughters then aged 8 and 6) travelled to Hong Kong and mainland China to select specimens from museums and institutions across China. Along the way we were able to visit some of the fossil sites that produced the material. High points were a visit to the famous Danshanpu Dinosaur Quarry (around which the Zigong Dinosaur Museum is built) in Sichuan, and an expedition to quarries in the northeastern province of Liaoning that have produced the world's first feathered dinosaurs as well as thousands of exquisitely preserved fish, frogs, lizards, insects, shrimp, plants, primitive birds and mammals.

Most specimens in the resulting Chinese Dinosaurs exhibition were lent from three leading Chinese museums - the Zigong Dinosaur Museum, the Beijing Natural History Museum and the National Geological Museum, also in Beijing. The material itself was originally collected from provinces all over China, including Yunnan, Shangdong, Sichuan, and Liaoning, the republic being blessed by an abundance of rocks of the right age to preserve dinosaur bones together with the right climate and topography to expose them. The specimens chosen range in age from over 200 million to about 80 million years old.

In June 2002, the dinosaurs and other specimens were shipped from mainland China to Sydney, where seven technicians from China spent three weeks with AM staff re-assembling the skeletons.

On display in the AM exhibition were 11 large dinosaur skeletons, comprised of at least 65 percent bone: Omeisaurus tianfuensis, Shunosaurus lii (adult and juvenile), Mamenchisaurus youngi and M. jingyanensis, all plant-eating sauropods 20, 10, 22 and 25 metres-long respectively; Yangchuanosaurus huopingensis and Y. shangyouensis, towering flesh-eating allosaurs that may have lived sympatrically; Lufengosaurus huenei, a 7 metre-long, 210 million-year-old prosauropod; Huayangosaurus taibaii, one of the world's oldest and most primitive stegosaurs; Psittacosaurus sinensis, a child-sized, parrot-beaked ceratopsian; Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus, a 5 metre-long hadrosaur with a unicorn-like horn on its head. Also on display was a 2 metre-long pliosaur cast, as well as dinosaur eggs, claws, teeth, spines, tail clubs, fish, plants, a tiny nothosaur, a turtle and a lizard-like reptile.

As impressive as the large dinosaur skeletons were, for palaeontologists the gems of the exhibition were probably the smaller feathered dinosaurs and ancient birds. On display were skeletons of four feathered dinosaurs, some of the world's oldest birds, a reconstruction of each specimen by James Reece, and four spectacular interpretative models demonstrating the evolutionary transition from dinosaur to bird. The life-sized models were commissioned by the Australian Museum and, in consultation with Walter Boles, were painstakingly sculpted and feathered by Alan Groves model-maker extraordinaire, who worked on the BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs TV series.

The feathered dinosaur section of the Chinese Dinosaurs exhibition was sponsored by the Australian Skeptics Inc. as part of its commitment to educate the public about the overwhelming evidence for evolution. The Liaoning fossils provide convincing scientific evidence of the existence of transitional species in the form of missing links between dinosaurs and birds - transitional taxa long disputed by creation 'scientists'.

Feathered dinosaurs were first discovered in China's Liaoning Province in 1996. They were recovered from 125 million-year-old, fine-grained shales, mudstones and slates (Yixian Formation) near the villages of Jianshangou and Sihetun. Beautifully preserved are not only the bony remains of the little theropods - skeletons, claws and even their last meals - but also the impressions of downy feather-like structures forming haloes around them. The animals lived in and around freshwater lakes that once dotted the region. Erupting volcanoes rained fine ash into the lakes, and anything that died or fell into the water was quickly buried in the fine sediment at the bottom of the lakes.

The feather-like filaments covering the skin of the small Chinese dinosaurs range from very simple hair-like structures to feathers as complex as those of modern birds, but the proportions and structure of the limbs of these animals suggest that they could not have flown. Instead, the 'proto-feathers' of these small, agile dinosaurs are thought to have been used for insulation, protection, balance and display.

The bird-like dinosaurs Sinosauropteryx prima, Caudipteryx zoui, Protarchaeopteryx robusta, Sinornithosaurus millenii and Velociraptor mongoliensis, and the dinosaur-like birds Sinornis santensis, Confuciusornis sanctus and Changchengornis hengdaoziensis were featured in the AM exhibition. The latter two birds retain a number of 'reptilian' features including three grasping fingers in their hands, while Sinornis retains a mouthful of teeth. The take-home message in this part of the exhibition is that the more than 10,000 kinds of birds alive today are a group of theropod dinosaurs -- and therefore dinosaurs are definitely not all extinct!

The Chinese Dinosaurs exhibition at the Australian Museum ran until February 23, 2003. Admission prices (includes general entry) are: families (2 adults, 2 children) $32; adults $13; children (5-15) $7; concession $8; under 5's free.

Chinese Dinosaurs finished in Sydney in late February 2003 before heading north to Newcastle, across the Tasman to New Zealand, and then to other Australian venues.

The Australian Museum website provides more information about the Chinese Dinosaurs exhibition at www.amonline.net.au/chinese_dinosaurs/

Sue Hand
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of New South Wales

The Australian Museum kindly hosted a function for IPC 2002 where delegates had an opportunity to view the Chinese Dinosaurs exhibition. One well known brachiopod worker from Deakin was seen looking singularly unimpressed and was overheard commenting disdainfully "Hrrrrmmmpff old dead chicken bones".

This was selected as the most phylocentric comment of the conference and he won a bottle of IPC 2002 Palaeo Pinot for this erudite contribution. Yes Niel, it may be true, but crikey they had some pretty impressive chickens in the Mesozoic of China!

Editors