Museum of flying reptiles in dinosaur age set to open

A museum specializing pterosaurs — warm-blooded flying reptiles in the age of dinosaurs — will open in Hami, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, in September. The opening will precede the 10th International Pterosaur Conference and the concurrent 18th Annual Meeting of the Chinese Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which will be held in the city from Sept 11 to 14.

According to Wang Xiaolin, a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the museum will be the world's first to be dedicated primarily to pterosaurs. He said the museum will explain the global distribution and evolution of pterosaurs and how they were discovered, along with scientific research achievements and a large number of pterosaur bones, eggs and fossil footprints.

The winged pterosaurs were among the earliest vertebrates on Earth to take to the skies. They are not dinosaurs but belong to a distinct branch of the vertebrate family tree, Wang told China News Service.

He and his team from the institute have been studying the fossils in Hami for more than a decade through field investigations, research and conservation. Their work shows that the pterosaur fossil distribution area in Hami's Gobi Desert is the world's largest and most densely populated pterosaur fossil site. The area spans thousands of square kilometers.