Dinosaurs on display(2)

A busy time

It is a busy time for the staff. As well as building new exhibits Di and his team, alongside experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences are busy repairing several of the key exhibits for the new museum. Repairing these specimens is time-consuming work and can take months.

In the workshop at the old museum are scattered large rocks containing fossils of different sizes, eras and rarity. Experts at the museum work on these rocks every day, removing the fossil skeletal remains delicately so that they can be preserved and displayed. Using small chisels and hammers they work their way around the surface of the rocks, extracting the fossils with great care.

These experts are trained scientists with training in paleontology, geology and climate and they also have to be skilled craftsmen who can dissect fossilized rocks and assemble models.

"When our experts get a fossilized rock they know immediately where the rock came from and its age. They have an idea then what sort of fossils might be contained in the rock," Di said.

Miao Kejia began learning how to extract fossils four years ago. "I didn't understand a lot about the way fossils were shaped. I wasn't sure about whether there were bones involved or not. Some of the rock surfaces are colored very differently to the fossils but some are almost identical and it's easy if you don't know about these creatures to make a mistake and cut into a bone.

"This was very difficult at the beginning but with experience I am finding it easier."

Looking natural

The repair workers also have to have an understanding of the aesthetics of display - if they use glue or screws in a display this must not be obvious. Everything has to look natural.

Miao Kejia was excited when he started working at the museum but the job has become rather humdrum lately. "This is not a job where you can see your work having an effect quickly. Sometimes you can spend an entire afternoon repairing a tiny skull bone under a microscope."

There are few complete dinosaur skeletons in the world. Most examples have parts missing. Museum staff try to recreate the missing segments with epoxy resin. Most of the good specimens in the museum have already been replicated - actual fossils are set aside for scientific research.

At the new museum the long-necked mamenchisaurus dinosaur and the ancient Yellow River Elephant are both replicas.

Paleontological work can take years to eventuate. Many years ago Di's teacher brought fossil bones of a dinosaur he had found in Lufeng, Yunnan Province back to Shanghai.

It was a large creature, about 10 meters' long and standing 8 meters' tall, but, by retirement the man had not been able to complete restoring the skeleton and there were many pieces missing. The fossils were stored in Shanghai until 2000 when Di was asked to work on the project.

He began working with the Lufeng Dinosaur Museum and returned the fossils to the museum. The museum located bones that matched the missing segments and eventually Di was able to complete the dinosaur skeleton. It was too large for the old museum but will stand proudly as one of the key exhibits in the new museum.

Di said today's money-driven society has not helped the work of paleontologists like himself.

In the 1980s if dinosaur bones were found in other provinces and if there were no facilities to repair or look after them the bones were sent to the Shanghai museum. Nowadays the museum has to buy fossils and exhibits from other museums - seeing the profits that can be made from tourism, governments throughout the country have set up their own museums and facilities.

Unique exhibits

"Now even if we find good examples in other provinces, we can't bring these back to Shanghai. It is not even easy to make models of these. These museums want to preserve their unique exhibits and to not have something that can be seen at other museums. Rarity gives something extra value. Even if these museums let you make copies they are expensive," Di said.

The level of mistrust among museums was illustrated in 2005 when the Shanghai Natural History Museum and the Zigong Dinosaur Museum in Sichuan held a joint exhibition in Shanghai. One of the key exhibits was a Yangchuanosaurus, a predatory raptor-like dinosaur, and this was highly prized.

As a gift to the new museum in Shanghai, the Sichuan museum handed over a copy of the Yangchuanosaurus. But the copy was sealed in crates and the Sichuan museum has kept the keys to the crates until recently.

"Even though it was a gift they didn't want us making copies of this. They knew we were quite capable of making quality replicas. Nowadays, with new technology, copies can look like the originals," Di said.