Japanese cartoonist returns fossil jawbone

BEIJING - Probactrosaurus gobiensis, an early herbivorous dinosaur that lived in China about 97.5 to 91 million years ago, got back a fossil of its lower jawbone on Thursday after having lost it nearly 50 years ago.

Nobuyuki Okada, a Japanese dinosaur cartoonist, accidentally bought the herbivore's fossilized bone at an international fossil market. Discovering what he had, he decided to turn it over to Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In 1959 and 1960, a Soviet-Chinese expedition unearthed fossil remains of the dinosaur's partial skull and lower jawbone in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.