Houston Community News >> Chinese Villagers Eat Dinosaur Bones
7/4/2007 BEIJING -- Villagers
in central China dug up a ton of dinosaur bones and boiled them in soup or
ground them into powder for traditional medicine, believing they were from
flying dragons and had healing powers.
Until last year, the fossils were being sold in Henan province as "dragon bones"
at about 4 yuan (50 cents) per kilogram (2.2 pounds), scientist Dong Zhiming
told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Dong, a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and
Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said when the villagers
found out the bones were from dinosaurs they donated 200 kilograms (440 pounds)
to him and his colleagues for research.
"They had believed that the 'dragon bones' were from the dragons flying in the
sky," he said.
The calcium-rich bones were sometimes boiled with other ingredients and fed to
children as a treatment for dizziness and leg cramps. Other times they were
ground up and made into a paste that was applied directly to fractures and other
injuries, he said.
The practice had been going on for at least two decades, he said.
Dong was among a team of scientists who recently excavated in Henan's Ruyang
County an 60-foot-long plant-eating dinosaur, which lived 85 million to 100
million years ago. Local officials held a news conference Tuesday, showing off
the find to the public for the first time.
Another two dinosaur fossils were being excavated in the area, which is rich in
fossilized dinosaur eggs, Dong said.
(Contributed by AP)