STL Science Center

STL Science Center

08 May 2012

Finding Chinese Papers

Original Chinese studies of dinosaurs are very hard to find online. There are probably many reasons for this, but I certainly do not want to enter the realm of conjecture and stereotyping their government this morning; as many conversations about secrecy in China often end up doing. Regardless, some studies have had papers published that I can find that are about, or at least mention Mamenchisaurus. The first paper I found is a description of one of the newer species to be placed in the Mamenchisaurus genus, M. jingyanensis. If it will allow you to download, I did not check this morning, you will have a paper that describes a new species, we know what those are like, so it will not harbor any enormous surprises.

I also found the abstract, and I wish you could download this one without buying it, a paper on a study of the tail club found in Mamenchisaurus and the supposed function of that club. The fact that the club exists is interesting in a sauropod, the fact that I cannot read someone's findings on the club is a little sad.

Another paper, which also must be purchased it appears, that I found interesting through the abstract, is about the classification and evolution of Mamenchisaurus by Liu Kui and Cai Kaiji. Given the title, it may be a dry scientific paper, but I am interested in it all the same as it appears to be the first study including all the species of Mamenchisaurus found to 1997; which we know is not every species since the first paper names a species found in 1998. If we had both papers drawing a conclusion between the evolution as seen by Kui and Kaiji and the newly found specimen could prove interesting.

All of the other papers which briefly mention Mamenchisaurus which I have found are actually about vastly different topics or animals and as such I will not present them here today. I would like to have the original naming paper so as to share how such scant remains came to be regarded as a sauropod and one with an extremely elongated neck at that, but today, it is not in the cards.

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