Dinos and dragons

[Mallon]

Interesting story relating the Chinese dragon mythology to dinosaurs. From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/04/AR2007070400437.html:

CHINESE VILLAGERS EAT DINOSAUR BONES
Fossils Believed to be "Flying Dragon" Bones with Healing Powers
The Associated Press
Thursday, July 5, 2007

BEIJING -- Villagers in central China spent decades digging up bones
they believed belonged to flying dragons and using them in
traditional medicines. Turns out the bones belonged to dinosaurs, and
now scientists are doing the digging.

Until last year, the fossils were being sold in Henan province as
"dragon bones" at about 25 cents a pound, scientist Dong Zhiming said
Wednesday.

The calcium-rich bones were sometimes boiled with other ingredients
and fed to children to treat dizziness and leg cramps. Other times
they were ground up and turned into a paste applied directly to
fractures and other injuries, he said.

Dong was part of a team that recently excavated in Henan's Ruyang
County a 60-foot-long plant-eating dinosaur that lived 85 million to
100 million years ago. The find was shown to the public Tuesday.

Dong said that when the villagers found out last year the bones were
from dinosaurs, they donated 440 pounds to him and his colleagues for
research. Over the last two decades, the villagers had dug up an
estimated 1 ton of bones.

"They had believed that the 'dragon bones' were from the dragons
flying in the sky," said Dong, a professor with the Institute of
Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy
of Sciences.

 

[laptoppop]

Makes sense -- being calcium rich, the bones would have actually helped both dizziness and leg cramps.

 

[archaeologist]

i live next door to china and the asian culture is not like the western one. such an event is not news here but would be considered normal and taking care of one's family.