The Greatest Dinosaur Hunter

They may not be famous like Brad Pitt or Mick Jagger but they are the masterminds due to which you can enjoy Jurassic Park and all dinosaur-linked issues. And the Chinese paleontologist Xu Xing seems to be the rock star of this domain.
"Three years ago someone said to me: 'You are in the top three in history in terms of how many new species you have named'," Xu told AFP.
"I had more than 20, I think, then. Over the past three years I have named a few more. I guess the total may be closer to 30. Maybe I am number one now."

His perhaps most spectacular finding is also his most recent one, a Tyrannosaurus-sized feathered dinosaur, discovered in the rich fossil reserves of the northern Inner Mongolia region.

"If you saw a mouse as big as a pig you would be very surprised, it is the same when we found the Gigantoraptor," he said.

The 38-year-old paleontologist says he is the by-product of the rigid Chinese education system.

"In China at that time, most people my age could not choose the major we wanted to do. In middle school I had wanted to be a physicist, but once at university I was placed in the department of geology, with a major in palaeontology. After I finished my bachelor's degree I started my masters, but for the first two years still I did not have any interest in the subject. I spent more time with computers and wanted to be a software designer. It was only in my last year that I started to seriously study fossils. I discovered my first species and became more and more interested in dinosaurs. Now it is part of my life." Xu explained.

He is now at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and he has achieved huge success in exploring China's rich legacy of fossils, still his reputation blurred when he was involved in a scandal when a finding he had checked proved to be an elaborate fake.

Forensic scanning revealed that the fossil, sold to unwitting US collectors by Chinese traffickers, was an ordinary fake made of a thin stone slab coated with grout and glued to a jigsaw of 88 fragments of rocks and fossilized bones. Xu had authenticated the "fossil" in 1999, but he also eventually exposed the error. He put the blame for the mistake on a sort of naivety and natural human excitement at the discovery, but stated that this improved his knowledge.

"I am more careful when I draw conclusions now. The incident highlighted the problems that beset China's fossil heartlands, where a rich archaeological legacy is often abused by smugglers and locals with little interest in the scientific implications of what they have stumbled upon. It is a very big problem in China. People view them like antiques, something that is spectacular and unique to own," said Xu.

"Xu is a brilliant representative of the new generation of Chinese paleontologists, who combines great ability in the field with an excellent command of the more theoretical aspects of palaeontological research," said Eric Buffetaut, a French academic, author of the History of Palaeontology.

"He has gained an outstanding international reputation by his discoveries and descriptions of remarkable dinosaur fossils, including some of the most spectacular feathered dinosaurs."

Xu attributes his success to hard work and a little luck, but the recent discovery demonstrated his skills on discovering new fossils. The first femur of the Gigantoraptor was found in 2005 while he was shooting some background footage for a documentary about one of his previous discoveries. He was showing how he was searching for fossils and while shooting, he stumbled upon a section of the femur (thigh bone) of the Gigantoraptor.

"We randomly picked up a bone on the surface. We initially thought it was from the same species as we had discovered before, but minutes later we realized it was from a meat-eating dinosaur. The remains of the animal, thought to have weighed 1,400 kg (3,100 pounds), was named the Gigantoraptor erlianensis, and is the biggest bird-like dinosaur ever found at a height of 5 m (17 feet)," Xu said.