Dong Zhiming

Dong Zhiming (Chinese董 枝 明; * January 1937 in Weihai ) is a Chinese paleontologist, known as the excavator of dinosaur fossils in China.

Dong Zhiming studied biology in Beijing and went to completion in 1962, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology ( IVPP ) in Beijing, then under the leadership of the doyen of Chinese vertebrate paleontology, Yang Zhongjian. In 1963 he found his first dinosaur fossils ( sauropod ) in the autonomous region of Xinjiang as part of a team of vertebrate paleontologists of the Institute. In the Cultural Revolution, from 1965 he was sent to the countryside and charted in southern China later. He held further contact with the IVPP, but whose work came to a halt during the Cultural Revolution. In 1975, he came across a construction site by chance on a big dinosaur reference of mid-Jurassic in Dashanpu, where more than 100 copies were mostly recovered by sauropod ( Shunosaurus, Datousaurus, Omeisaurus ). They come from a time, otherwise hardly dinosaur fossils have been found from which and in which the sauropods began to develop into large forms. In 1980 the site was put under protection in 1987 a museum opened at the site ( Zigong Dinosaur Museum ). Dong could now travel abroad and organized with the Canadians Philip Currie and Dale Russell 1985, a Sino- Canadian joint project for excavations. They met in the Junggar Basin of Xinjiang region on a large Sauropodenfundstelle and were able to describe eleven new species (such as Mamenchisaurus ). His findings also cast new light on the spread of the dinosaurs from Asia to North America. He sees the archaeoceratops found by him a precursor of ceratopsians like Triceratops Cretaceous in North America.

A carnivorous dinosaurs, Sinraptor dongi, was named by Currie and others after him. He even named as the Tianchiasaurus found at Heavenly Lake in the Tian Shan nedegoapeferima by the stars of the film Jurassic Park in recognition of a donation from Steven Spielberg for the IVPP.

Overall, he found in excavations in China ( and described ) to 1997, 18 new species of dinosaur, which he used in the hard sandstones of China to western paleontologists unconventional methods ( blasting ).

In 2000 he became an honorary member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

He is married and has a son and a daughter.

Writings

• Dinosaurian faunas of China, China Ocean Press, Beijing, 1992