Chengdu Natural History Museum

[Isotelus2883]

During the somewhat annual family trip back to China, we visited Chengdu for some small time. We visited some of the many archaeological sites around, but no fossil hunting. Initially we were going to Zigong to see some dinosaurs, but due to a lack of time and trains, that was cancelled. Not a really big interest, so probably we won’t go next year. Did have time to visit here. This museum is known for some great collections of the more or less local dinosaurs. They had some great small shelly fossils from Shanxi, but I forgot to take pictures of them. Here is some of the ‘early life’ gallery.

A nicely sized Eoredlichia intermedia with gut.

A very well preserved Cindarella

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Trilobites. The glass was an unfortunate distance from them, so I couldn’t get great photos.

Some very odd proetids that I think are from Yunnan.

A big, fat calymenid which is probably from a similar locality that produces the Coronocephalus, not Moroccan.

Some nice, but unprepared Asaphopsoides from Hunan. Unfortunately none of the trilobites had locality info and my Chinese reading isn’t great so most of these are guesses.

Well, except for this English label, which has a typo. This is evidently a Walliserops bifurcatus. 

Here’s a large plate of polished Stringocephalus. Each one is about baseball sized.

The museum also had some nice Triassic material.

Some lovely footprints, but not as good as the Massachusetts ones.

Some big plants, not sure what they are.

This HUGE mass of crinoids which are growing around some driftwood.

Not Triassic, but. some nice Lycoptera.

A chonky, chunky Chunkingichthys

And a very big crinoid plate. On closer inspection, they are very poorly prepared, and many of the stems have been cobbled on quite carelessly.

 

[Kane]

It seems we are being treated to a few museum trips today. I had to chuckle at the "trifurcatus" typo. Thanks for the tour!

[Isotelus2883]

An to end, I did manage to take a picture of the dinosaur exhibit. 

A great, educational museum in general, but severely lacking in trilobites. Thankfully, I am in Zibo right now and will be going to Linqu tomorrow, to hopefully find some of the Longgang section if it isn’t destroyed by construction. I will also visit the Ezhuang, Houziyu, and Yangjiazhuang sections, to find some Kushan and Zhangxia Fm bugs. 

[Kane]

Wow! I am jealous and excited for you. So few us get the opportunity to dig there. As you know, a lot of new and interesting trilobites are coming out of there. 

[Isotelus2883]

Thanks. It really is lucky that I’m close to here. However, site preservation is really not a consideration when people are building here. Some really great layers have been removed by construction at a site that the weather probably won’t let me get to, and I read a post on a forum where at least a great deal of the Longgang section has been removed.