A letter from a 7-year-old British child

  "A letter from Britain!"

  The reply of Zigong Dinosaur Museum was as follows.



Dear Lily Viner,

   It’s such a pleasure to know of your interest in our museum. As for the interesting questions you asked, the answers are as follows.

   1.The meat eaters of dinosaurs are called carnivores. And among the permanent display of the dinosaur kingdom in the exhibition hall of the museum, there are 4 different species showing for the visitors, you can find them in the pictures below. Their nature depend on their different species, some are like present wolves, some are like tigers or lions.

Gasosaurus constructus(the latter one)

Szechuanosaurus zigongensis(the latter one)

Yangchuanosaurus hepingensis(the bigger one)

Szechuanosaurus campi(the standing ones)

   2. Dear child, I’m a little confused by this question. The history of the earth we are living on is very long, which is about 4.6 billion years. But dinosaurs'' is not so much long. They have dominated the earth for about 160 million years, almost the whole Mesozoic era, including Triassic period, Jurassic period and Cretaceous period, from 252 million to 66 million years ago. Zigong dinosaurs belong to the Jurassic period.

   3. We all know raptors run very fast. By comparing proportion of their femurs and tibias to the same parts of modern antelopes’, the scientists found they are similar. You know antelopes run very fast too.

   4. We found bones in Zigong city, Sichuan province,southwest China. The city covers an area of 4,373 square kilometers, in which there are about 200 localities bearing fossils, more than 40 dinosaur fossil sites among them. Dashanpu dinosaur fossil site is one of them, which contains 3,000 square meters. Zigong Dinosaur Museum was built over it and officially opened to the public in the Spring Festival of 1987. The Spring Festival is the most important traditional festival for Chinese, and it is also an occasion for family reunion which is a little similar to your Christmas Day. Zigong Dinosaur Museum, 9 km northeast of the downtown of Zigong, is the first professional dinosaur museum in China and one of the three largest dinosaur museums with burial site in the world. Covering an area of 70,000 square meters, Zigong Dinosaur Museum has a collection of fossil specimens almost including all the known dinosaur species in the Jurassic of 205-135 million years ago. It was regarded as “the best dinosaur museum in the world” by National Geographic.

The distribution map of Zigong localities

   5.Riojasaurus may be the first plants eater. However, it was a so early dinosaur found in the late Triassic layer of which the exact year is still uncertain. It lived in where is Argentina now.

   That’s all my answers for your questions, dear Lily. Hope it will meet your satisfaction. More information you can get at the website of Zigong Dinosaur Museum, http://www.zdm.cn, and you can also contact me at zgklbwg@163.com by email to get faster answer.

I’m looking forward to meeting you in the future, keep in touch.

Please pass my warm regards to your family.

Best wishes！





Yours sincerely,





Zigong Dinosaur Museum