Xu Xing’s Dinosaurs

by Ernie Diaz

Maybe the government should make our major life choices for us. Xu Xing originally wanted to study software design. Had he had his way, today he’d be one more sixty-hour a week jamoke in a white short-sleeve dress shirt, eyeing flat-screens at Carrefour on his day off.

Instead, he was ordered to major in paleontology. Now he spends his days searching for bones and fossils. He also does plenty of lecturing to packed houses, and finds time for writing and directing as well. As he puts it, “Going into the desert to discover new species, to explore the unknown, is the best job in the world.”

Xu has discovered twenty five new species of dinosaurs, making him the most prolific dinosaur-hunter alive. The job is decidedly less Indiana Jonesy than it was for Xu’s idol R.C. Andrews, but he still has his run-ins with farmers who plunder his excavations for smuggling gold. Regardless, Xu’s greatest thrill, as with all great scientists, comes from putting together the clues his ceaseless work unearths. Here are some of the results.

Gigantoraptor

Oviraptorosaurs were egg-stealing , feathered lizards from the Cretaceous Period. Some were only the size of a turkey. But Gigantoraptor – eight meters long, a ton-and-a-half – the parakeet-from-hell didn’t steal so much as just grab whatever he pleased with his awkward wing-like appendages and stalk off. Xu Xing discovered Gigantoraptor while enacting the dusting process on a supposed sauropod bone for a Japanese documentary, when he realized he had stumbled on a whole new species.

Guanlong

Guanlong was a late Jurassic ancestor of ultra-predator Tyrannosaurus, predating his descendant by some 92 million years. Besides the aerodynamic hood ornament, Guanlong had three long fingers on each hand to distinguish him from his relative. That and the fact that he was only about a fourth as big, topping out at 3.5 meters long. Xu Xing found the only two specimens known in the badlands of Wucaiwan, lying on top of each other, although they had died at different times, and there was no sign of struggle. Perhaps suicide pacts contributed to the extinction of the dinosaur.

Chaoyangsaurus

Goodness knows how renderings this complete can come from the discovery of a jaw, a couple of vertebrae and a few bits of forearm. Maybe the marvelously preservative quality of the Liaoning soil where Xu dug these bits up made them extra-easy to extrapolate from. He maintains that they were herbivores, a good thing considering they didn’t grow much over one meter, true pipsqueaks for Upper Jurassic times.

Dilong

That’s no two-toned velociraptor; it’s another tyrannosaur prototype, albeit a five-foot, twenty five-pound one. This little terror made a big stir when Xu Xing dug him up in 2004; evidence suggested that he was warm-blooded, as well as covered in primitive hair-like feathers. For paleontologists, this theory was earth-shattering, like when one of us learns that Jamie Lee Curtis is a hermaphrodite.

Liaoceratops

Another puny-saurus from Liaoning province, weighing a mere seven pounds, Liao-horn-face is nonetheless of more interest to many paleontologists than his massive descendants. The little nubbins protruding from under its eyes show that the fearsome horns of Triceratops and similar creatures weren’t for impaling aggressors ala One Million Years B.C., but for attracting mates. Who said evolution was pragmatic? A million years from now, maybe human males will be born inside tiny Porsche Carreras.

Yinlong

Despite its resemblance to a first-grader being sent to bed before SpongeBob is over, Yinlong is the oldest ceratopsian known to science. The name means “hidden dragon”, but not for its ability to blend in; evidence suggests Yinlong was one of Guanlong’s favorite hors d’ oeuvres. Xu Xing found Yinlong out in Xinjiang where the desert sequence from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed.

Pedopenna

The Italian-menu name refers to feet with feathers. Pedopenna is older than Archaeopteryx, the so-called “first bird”, and a crucial new link in the dinosaur-bird connection. The hind-wings show that proto-birds did a lot of gliding before they learned to fly. Its evolution from four to two flappers is a shame for Chinese, who will take a wing over a drumstick every time.

Beipiaosaurus

“What are you?” a perplexed fellow Cretacean, say a Tyrannosaurus, might have asked Beipiaosaurus. “Buzzard, anteater, porcupine?” Oh, that’s right; those creatures wouldn’t be around until long after the Cretaceous Period ended, but Beipiaosaurus puzzled the heck out of Xu Xing, who named the species Beipiaosaurus inexpectis, as in, “I didn’t expect this.” Reduced inner toes and cheek teeth are weird enough, but Beipiao is utterly unique in sporting two layers of feathers, a short downy one, and longer, stiffer plumes protruding along the back, evolved for…any guesses? Correct. Mating displays.

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