Hong Kong officials say they have discovered dinosaur fossils in the city for the first time, on a remote and uninhabited island.
The fossils were part of a large dinosaur from the Cretaceous period, about 145m to 66m years ago, the government said in a statement. They will need to conduct further studies to confirm the species of the dinosaur.
The rock was found on Port Island in the Unesco Global Geopark in the city’s north-eastern waters, and the fossils are to be put on display on Friday at one of Hong Kong’s shopping districts.
The secretary for development, Bernadette Linn Hon-ho, said: “The discovery is of great significance and provides new evidence for research on palaeoecology in Hong Kong.”
Experts speculated that the dinosaur’s body was probably buried by sand and gravel and then resurfaced after a large flood, and was subsequently buried again at the discovery site, the statement said.
The discovery came after the conservation department in March alerted its Antiquities and Monuments Office to some sedimentary rock containing substances suspected to be vertebrate fossils. Previously only a dinosaur-era fish fossil had been found in Hong Kong.
Prof Michael Pittman, a palaeontologist with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the discovery was an exciting moment for the city, which has long hosted extensive dinosaur research but had not yet been able to claim a discovery.
He said: “Hong Kong is famous for being a built-up landscape, but half of it is country park. In the countryside areas most of what you see are dinosaur-era rocks, but it’s volcanic rocks – and they are bad places to find fossils because fossils just melt.
“But Port Island is one of the islands that has dinosaur-age rocks of the right type and right environment.”
China is one of four nations leading dinosaur research – alongside the US, Canada and Argentina – and tens of thousands of dinosaur eggs have been found in Guangdong province, where Hong Kong sits.
Pittman said: “I’m hoping that looking at these fossils, we’ll see differences with ones from some of the famous sites in China like Sichuan and Yunnan. It could tell a really interesting story about the biogeography of the animals.”
The government said it had commissioned mainland Chinese experts to conduct field investigations.
Port Island is closed to the public from Wednesday until further notice to facilitate future investigations and excavations.
The fossils will be on display at the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui, one of the city’s popular shopping districts, starting on Friday. The government is also planning to open a temporary workshop for the public to observe experts’ preparation of fossil specimens by the end of 2024.
With Associated Press
