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Rare fossils seized
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WHEN Song Dawen, a policeman at the Meilin Checkpoint, began a routine inspection of a Shenzhen-bound small truck, he did not realize he would stumble upon an attempt to illegally export the biggest haul of fossils ever seized in Shenzhen.
When he looked inside cartons purported to be raw jade at noon on February 15, the owner, a Henan-dialect-speaking man in his 30s, fled in a nearby car, leaving more than 400 dinosaur egg fossils in the truck.
The fossils are extremely rare, having a history of at least 65 million years, according to archeologists from the Cultural Relic Appraisal Committee of Guangdong Province.
The driver of the truck, Yao Linsheng, was arrested while trying to escape. He said he was hired by the owner from Xixia County, Henan Province, to ship the “round stones" from Guangzhou to Shenzhen for export.
Xixia County, famous worldwide for its rich grounds of dinosaur egg fossils, is among several areas in China where illegal excavation of fossils is rampant.
Archeologists from the Cultural Relic Appraisal Committee of Guangdong Province said the biggest nest in the catch, having 29 eggs, is extremely rare and is obviously a first-level national cultural relic.
Available in China's black market at hundreds of yuan, a dinosaur egg fossil could be sold for US$10,000 or more in some foreign markets, according to Doctor Zhou Jun, a member of the Cultural Relic Appraisal Committee of Shenzhen City.(Alfred Zhang)
Where ancient eggs were sold like oranges
WHEN China placed Qinglong Mountain, in Hubei Province, under State protection for archaeological reasons in 1995, excavations began on the mountain, which is believed to house about 5,000 dinosaur egg fossils, the biggest collection in the world.
Mandarin orange traders in the area ceased to buy fruits from farmers, and instead began looking out for “round stones", sometimes as cheap as 0.1 yuan (US$0.012) each.
Some locals used steel bars and dynamite to dig deeper after searches on the surface. Some even closed their doors and shovelled into the ground inside their houses.
The digging and the black market continued to flourish until the authorities raided a house on June 26, 2000 where 493 dinosaur egg fossils were stored.
The owner, He Wenjun, was arrested afterwards. According to Changjiang Daily, He and several other accomplices illegally traded more than 1,500 dinosaur egg fossils in just more than one year, the worldwide total finds before 1985.
He was found guilty of illegally trading almost 500 dinosaur egg fossils and sentenced to two-and-a-half years' imprisonment in December 2000.(SD News)
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