Language: Chinese and English bilingual
ISBN/ISSN: 9787116034723
Published on: 2001-06
Hardcover
In August 1964, a comprehensive research party of the Bureau of Petroleum Geology, Ministry of Geology discovered a new fossiliferous site and collected some fossil remains from the Cretaceous beds in Zhucheng County, Shandong Province. These fossils include tibia bone of a fairly large-sized hadrosaur. Later excavations were made at the same site in 1964, 1965, 1966 and 1968 by the Institute of Geolgoy and the Museum of Geology, as a result of which a large quantity about thirty tons of dinosaurian bones were collected. The fossils were found in a layer of greyish green conglomeratic sandstone, belonging to the Wangshi.Group of late Cretaceous age. The site lies at the end of a gully named Longgujian which is about on kilometer north of Kugou village in the district of Lubiao, Zhucheng County. All fossils were excavated from the single quarry, which the bones had been disarticulated during deposition. Among the collections there are about ten more or less preserved maxillae, five right and five left ones, which represent at least five individuals of hadrosaurians in the quarry.
After the preparation of dinosaurian bones a omposite skeleton was mounted up, and displayed in the Palaeontological Hall of the Beijing Museum of Natural History from April 1972 to October 1982. The mounted skeleteon is about 1470cm in length. As some of the fossil remains were somewhat obscured after the mounting of the skeleton and the time for their study was limited, only a preliminary research was made.
A new generic and specific name Shantungosaurus giganteus was proposed in the paper published 1973. The composite skeleton is preserved in trhe National Geological Museum of China and designated by Catalogue number V 1780. The type of the skull is rather long, low, and narrow in front but high and broad posteriorly. The absent parts of the skull have been restored and the skeleton mounted up once again. The restored skull is 1630mm in length. The most important osteological features of the species are briefly given below.
The skull is tolerably preserved from the plane of the exoccipital to the anterior end of frontals. The postorbital is well preserved of the right side, but it is damaged on the left side. The skull is 620mm in length, 465mm in breadth of posterior part and 325mm in height. On its superior surface, there is a low depression extending toward the anterior end of frontals. The frontal bone has the shape of a shallow dish. The supratemporal fossa is anterior-posteriorly elongated. The exoccipital is roughened on the surface. The sutures around the squamosal and parietals are clearly visible. There is a perfect process of parietal on the right side, but the left one has been broken away from the beam. A tubercle-like element of interparietal is prominent and lies at the posterior end of the frontals which is nearly rectangular and constricted at the lateral margins. Its outline though obscured in the rear is clearly visible.
