Trip To Qijiang 3: Fossil Trees & Future Qijiang Museum of Natural History
The fossil wood site is actually in the backyard of a farmer living on the edge of town. I don't know if there are plans to develop this into a bona fide tourist attraction -- it, like the tracksite, is advertised in their tourism brochure, but you can't get into it without the farmer opening it up, so... This wood is much, much older than the tracks -- it's in the Late Jurassic-age Shaximiao Formation. This formation, next door in Sichuan Province, is famous for producing some spectacular dinosaurs, including the absurdly long-necked sauropods Mamenchisaurus and Omeisaurus, the big theropod Yangchuanosaurus, and the spiky stegosaur Tuojiangosaurus. If some of those names seem familiar, it's because we saw mounts of many of these at the IVPP and Beijing Museum of Natural History!
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