Society

Japanese cartoonist returns fossil jawbone

By Lin Shujuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-04-15 08:03

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.

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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.

Two years later, paleontologists from the Soviet Union borrowed the fossils, believed to come from an ancestor of duck-billed dinosaurs, for the purpose of research.

The two countries had an agreement calling for the fossils to eventually return to China. But they never came back, largely because relations between China and Soviet Union had soured.

The fossil's lower jawbone was missing until 1996, when Okada found it at the fossil market.

As expensive as the fossil was, Okada bought it. He later took photographs of it and showed them to friends who were dinosaur experts in Japan.

Learning that the fossil belongs to China, Okada decided to return it.

"For some reason, it came into my possession, and I will return it to where it belongs," he said on Thursday.

"I wish this fossil specimen would also serve as an intermediary of friendship between the Japanese and Chinese peoples."