Dong Zhi-Ming
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Dong Zhiming (
Chinese Chinese may refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people identified with China, through nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **Han Chinese, East Asian ethnic group native to China. **'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic ...
: 董枝明,
Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
: ''Dǒng Zhimíng''; January 1937 – 20 October 2024) was a Chinese vertebrate
paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...
formerly employed at the
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP; ) of People's Republic of China, China is a research institution and collections repository for fossils, including many dinosaur and pterosaur specimens (many from the Yixian For ...
(IVPP) in
Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...
. He began working at the IVPP in 1962, studying under
Yang Zhongjian Yang Zhongjian, also Yang Chung-chien (; 1 June 1897 – 15 January 1979), courtesy name Keqiang (), also known as C.C. (Chung Chien) Young, was a Chinese paleontologist and zoologist. He was one of China's foremost vertebrate paleontologists. ...
, who was director at the time. He described fossil remains of many
dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic Geological period, period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the #Evolutio ...
s. He investigated and described the
Shaximiao Formation The Shaximiao Formation () is a Middle to Late Jurassic aged geological formation in Sichuan, China, most notable for the wealth of dinosaurs fossils that have been excavated from its strata. The Shaximiao Formation is exposed in and around the ...
; an important contribution to science since they are composed of
Middle Jurassic The Middle Jurassic is the second Epoch (geology), epoch of the Jurassic Period (geology), Period. It lasted from about 174.1 to 161.5 million years ago. Fossils of land-dwelling animals, such as dinosaurs, from the Middle Jurassic are relativel ...
beds which do not commonly yield
fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...
s.


Early life and education

Dong Zhiming was born in January 1937 in
Weihai Weihai ( zh, t=, p=Wēihǎi), formerly Weihaiwei ( zh, s=, p=Wēihǎiwèi, l=Mighty Sea Fort, first=t), is a prefecture-level city and major seaport city in the easternmost Shandong province of China. It borders Yantai to the west and the Yellow ...
,
Shandong Shandong is a coastal Provinces of China, province in East China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River. It has served as a pivotal cultural ...
. At the age of 13, Dong was introduced to dinosaurs by a museum exhibit showcasing
hadrosaur Hadrosaurids (), also hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs, are members of the ornithischian family Hadrosauridae. This group is known as the duck-billed dinosaurs for the flat duck-bill appearance of the bones in their snouts. The ornithopod fami ...
fossils. Dong graduated from university in 1962 with a degree in biology.


Career

After graduating, Dong Zhiming began working at the
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP; ) of People's Republic of China, China is a research institution and collections repository for fossils, including many dinosaur and pterosaur specimens (many from the Yixian For ...
(IVPP) in
Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...
where he was mentored by
Yang Zhongjian Yang Zhongjian, also Yang Chung-chien (; 1 June 1897 – 15 January 1979), courtesy name Keqiang (), also known as C.C. (Chung Chien) Young, was a Chinese paleontologist and zoologist. He was one of China's foremost vertebrate paleontologists. ...
, the "father of Chinese vertebrate palaeontology". Yang had helped initiate the formal study of fossils in China during the 1920s and continued to lead the field of Chinese palaeontology even after cooperation with foreign institutions ended in 1949. More than a decade later, he no longer participated in field work but was willing to take on Dong as a student, particularly after Dong made it clear he was interested in researching more challenging subjects like dinosaurs as opposed to invertebrates, for which fossils were more abundant and easily transported. Over the next three years Dong authored roughly 600 academic papers in both English and Mandarin. Dong participated in his first field expedition in 1963, aged 26, when he was part of a seven-person team sent by the IVPP to a site 180 miles outside
Ürümqi Ürümqi, , is the capital of the Xinjiang, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwestern China. With a census population of 4 million in 2020, Ürümqi is the second-largest city in China's northwestern interior after Xi'an, also the ...
,
Xinjiang Xinjiang,; , SASM/GNC romanization, SASM/GNC: Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Sinkiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People' ...
. On this expedition, Dong discovered fossils of a sauropod dinosaur.


Dashanpu bone beds

Dong Zhiming's palaeontology research halted in 1965 when he became one of many academics ordered to participate in the
Down to the Countryside Movement The Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement, often known simply as the Down to the Countryside Movement, was a policy instituted in the China, People's Republic of China between the mid-1950s and 1978. As a result of what he p ...
, which saw him and 17 million other privileged youth in China sent to work on farms across the country. Dong worked on a farm in
Henan Henan; alternatively Honan is a province in Central China. Henan is home to many heritage sites, including Yinxu, the ruins of the final capital of the Shang dynasty () and the Shaolin Temple. Four of the historical capitals of China, Lu ...
for one year and returned to Beijing just as the
Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...
was beginning. With the IVPP all but shut down, he was reassigned to work on geological surveys in southwestern China where he helped design irrigation systems. Nonetheless, his mentor Yang continued to study palaeontology and met with Dong often, encouraging him to continue his research in addition to his work for the state. Yang also returned to field work during this time, including a 1975 expedition in which he investigated reports of fossils being found by road crews in the town of Dashanpu,
Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...
. Around this time, Dong petitioned the government to reinstate the IVPP's journal - ''Vertebrata PalAsiatica'' - and returned to work at the IVPP. One of Dong's first missions after returning to palaeontology was to follow up on Yang's finds at Dashanpu, and in 1976 he discovered the first dinosaur fossils dating to the
Middle Jurassic The Middle Jurassic is the second Epoch (geology), epoch of the Jurassic Period (geology), Period. It lasted from about 174.1 to 161.5 million years ago. Fossils of land-dwelling animals, such as dinosaurs, from the Middle Jurassic are relativel ...
that had ever been found in China. Although this represented a monumental discovery, it would be the last he shared with his mentor: Yang Zhongjian died on 15 January 1979. As international tensions eased, Dong Zhiming began to cooperate with international researchers in addition to Chinese scientists. After the discovery of fossils at Dashanpu by both him and Yang, Dong returned to the township in 1980 accompanied by a team of scientists from the
British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...
. Being familiar with the area, Dong elected to begin their search for fossils at a construction site for a planned
natural gas Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...
facility which had excavated the top of a nearby hill, and after entering the site he and his colleagues discovered an unexpected treasure trove of fossils. Dong and his team worked to end the construction on the hill, and by autumn the local government agreed to end development at Dashanpu despite having already invested over one million yuan into the project. Dong's research at the site would lead to the formal description of the
Shaximiao Formation The Shaximiao Formation () is a Middle to Late Jurassic aged geological formation in Sichuan, China, most notable for the wealth of dinosaurs fossils that have been excavated from its strata. The Shaximiao Formation is exposed in and around the ...
and the preservation of over 15,000 ft2 of dinosaur-bearing bone bed as part of the
Zigong Dinosaur Museum The Zigong Dinosaur Museum () is located near the city of Zigong, Sichuan, China, in the township of Dashanpu. History The museum sits on top of a large concentration of a diverse dinosaur assemblage from the Shaximiao Formation. The museu ...
.


China-Canada Dinosaur Project

As work was underway preserving and studying the bone beds at Dashanpu, China entered into a period of political and economic reform. Accompanied by
Sun Ailing The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light an ...
, Dong Zhiming visited
Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...
,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
in November 1985. Both a scientific and diplomatic mission, their visit helped initiate the
China-Canada Dinosaur Project The China-Canada Dinosaur Project (Standard Chinese, Chinese: 中国-加拿大恐龙计划; Pinyin: ''Zhōngguó-jiānádà kǒnglóng jìhuà''; also known as ''Sino-Canadian Dinosaur Project'') was a six-year series of paleontology, palaeontol ...
(CCDP). With $15 million CAD worth of funding, the mission was one of the largest ever mounted in the history of palaeontology and was the first major show of cooperation between Chinese and foreign palaeontologists since 1949. As an international collaboration, Dong Zhiming represented the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology as one of the project's three leaders; his two co-leaders were Philip J. Currie of the
Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology (RTMP; often referred to as the Royal Tyrrell Museum) is a palaeontology museum and research facility in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. The museum was named in honour of Joseph Burr Tyrrell, and is situate ...
and
Dale Russell Dale Alan Russell (27 December 1937 – 21 December 2019) was an American-Canadian geologist and palaeontologist. Throughout his career Russell worked as the Curator of Fossil Vertebrates at the Canadian Museum of Nature, Research Professor at ...
of the
Canadian Museum of Nature The Canadian Museum of Nature (; CMN) is a national museums of Canada, national natural history museum based in Canada's National Capital Region (Canada), National Capital Region. The museum's exhibitions and public programs are housed in the Vi ...
. The China-Canada Dinosaur Project lasted four field seasons, beginning in May 1986 and ending in 1991. As many as fifty researchers were at work in the field at one time. Expeditions related to the project were undertaken in sites within both countries' borders, including the
Canadian Arctic Northern Canada (), colloquially the North or the Territories, is the vast northernmost region of Canada, variously defined by geography and politics. Politically, the term refers to the three territories of Canada: Yukon, Northwest Territories a ...
and the
Junggar Basin The Junggar Basin (), also known as the Dzungarian Basin or Zungarian Basin, is one of the largest sedimentary basins in Northwest China. It is located in Dzungaria in northern Xinjiang, and enclosed by the Tarbagatai Mountains of Kazakhstan in t ...
of Xinjiang. In the Junggar Basin, Dong impressed his Canadian colleagues by using
dynamite Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and Stabilizer (chemistry), stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish people, Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern German ...
to clear tonnes of
overburden In mining, overburden (also called waste or spoil) is the material that lies above an area that lends itself to economical exploitation, such as the rock, soil, and ecosystem that lies above a coal seam or ore body. Overburden is distinct from tai ...
without damaging important fossils that had been spotted underneath; these fossils would later become the
holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...
for ''
Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum ''Mamenchisaurus'' ( , or spelling pronunciation ) is an extinct genus of sauropod dinosaurs known for their remarkably long necks which made up nearly half the total body length. Numerous species have been assigned to the genus; however, the val ...
'', named in honour of the CCDP. More than 11 new species of dinosaur were described as a result of the CCDP, including a new genus of
theropod Theropoda (; from ancient Greek , (''therion'') "wild beast"; , (''pous, podos'') "foot"">wiktionary:ποδός"> (''pous, podos'') "foot" is one of the three major groups (clades) of dinosaurs, alongside Ornithischia and Sauropodom ...
discovered by Dong in 1987; this dinosaur was later named '' Sinraptor dongi'' in his honour.


Later career

On the advice of his late mentor, Dong Zhiming continued his research into palaeontology with a focus on locating fossils that bridge known periods of dinosaur evolution and explain the gaps in-between. In the 1980s he sparked controversy by suggesting that fossils of the dinosaur ''
Segnosaurus ''Segnosaurus'' is a genus of therizinosaurid dinosaur that lived in what is now southeastern Mongolia during the Late Cretaceous, about 102–86 million years ago. Multiple incomplete but well-preserved specimens were discovered in the Go ...
'' and its relatives belonged to a new order of dinosaur: Segnosaurischia. Historically, all dinosaurs have been categorized as belonging to either the order
Ornithischia Ornithischia () is an extinct clade of mainly herbivorous dinosaurs characterized by a pelvic structure superficially similar to that of birds. The name ''Ornithischia'', or "bird-hipped", reflects this similarity and is derived from the Greek ...
or
Saurischia Saurischia ( , meaning "reptile-hipped" from the Greek ' () meaning 'lizard' and ' () meaning 'hip joint') is one of the two basic divisions of dinosaurs (the other being Ornithischia), classified by their hip structure. Saurischia and Ornithi ...
, and Dong's suggestion of a third order sparked controversy. American palaeontologist
Gregory S. Paul Gregory Scott Paul (born December 24, 1954) is an American freelance researcher, author and illustrator who works in paleontology. He is best known for his work and research on theropoda, theropod dinosaurs and his detailed illustrations, both l ...
offered his support for Dong's theory in 1984, but that ''Segnosaurus'' represented evidence not of a third order of dinosaurs but instead that all dinosaurs belonged to a single order. Ultimately, further research into both ''Segnosaurus'' and ''
Therizinosaurus ''Therizinosaurus'' (; meaning 'scythe lizard') is a genus of very large therizinosaurid dinosaurs that lived in Asia during the Late Cretaceous period in what is now the Nemegt Formation around 70 million years ago. It contains a single speci ...
'' proved that the latter was a theropod and that the two belonged to the same order, and so the dinosaurs once proposed as belonging to Segnosaurischia were assigned to the order Saurischia. However, Dong continued to push this third-order theory as late as 2008, shortly before his retirement. In a 1988 paper authored by Dong and translated into English by
Angela Milner Angela Cheryl Milner (3 October 1947 – 13 August 2021) was a British paleontologist who, in 1986 alongside Alan Charig, described the dinosaur ''Baryonyx''. Early life Milner was born Angela Girven in Gosforth, daughter of Cyril and Luci ...
, he argued that legendary descriptions of
dragon A dragon is a Magic (supernatural), magical legendary creature that appears in the folklore of multiple cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but European dragon, dragons in Western cultures since the Hi ...
bones in the ''
I Ching The ''I Ching'' or ''Yijing'' ( ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. The ''I Ching'' was originally a divination manual in ...
'' and other ancient works could be attributed to Chinese farmers uncovering and misidentifying dinosaur fossils. During his field work, Dong also occasionally encountered modern farmers who believed that large dinosaur fossils were the remains of dragons, and had to convince them otherwise in order to acquire the fossils for study. Along with co-author
Paul Sereno Paul Callistus Sereno (born October 11, 1957) is a professor of paleontology at the University of Chicago who has discovered several new dinosaur species on several continents, including at sites in Inner Mongolia, Argentina, Morocco and Niger. ...
, Dong reviewed his initial description of ''
Huayangosaurus ''Huayangosaurus'' is a genus of stegosaurian dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic of China. The name derives from "Huayang" (華陽), an alternate name for Sichuan (the province where it was discovered), and "saurus", meaning "lizard". It lived d ...
'', an
ankylosaurid Ankylosauridae () is a family of armored dinosaurs within Ankylosauria, and is the sister group to Nodosauridae. The oldest known ankylosaurids date to around 122 million years ago and went extinct 66 million years ago during the Cretaceous–Pal ...
he'd discovered in Dashanpu in 1979 and described in 1982. This 1992 review saw Dong and Sereno determine that ''Huayangosaurus'' had a parasacral spine, or a
vertebral column The spinal column, also known as the vertebral column, spine or backbone, is the core part of the axial skeleton in vertebrates. The vertebral column is the defining and eponymous characteristic of the vertebrate. The spinal column is a segmente ...
which ran adjacent to the
sacrum The sacrum (: sacra or sacrums), in human anatomy, is a triangular bone at the base of the spine that forms by the fusing of the sacral vertebrae (S1S5) between ages 18 and 30. The sacrum situates at the upper, back part of the pelvic cavity, ...
; and that the animal's heightened pedicles may have helped keep its dorsal plates in place without
ossified Ossification (also called osteogenesis or bone mineralization) in bone remodeling is the process of laying down new bone material by cells named osteoblasts. It is synonymous with bone tissue formation. There are two processes resulting in t ...
tendon A tendon or sinew is a tough band of fibrous connective tissue, dense fibrous connective tissue that connects skeletal muscle, muscle to bone. It sends the mechanical forces of muscle contraction to the skeletal system, while withstanding tensi ...
s to hold them upright.


Contributions and recognition

Dong Zhiming has discovered and described more than 42 genera of dinosaurs, of which 27 are still considered valid. A 2008 study found that Dong ranked fourth on a list of people responsible for naming the most dinosaurs; however, when only valid names were counted Dong ranked first, meaning he has named more species of dinosaur than anyone else in history. While most of Dong's names are still considered valid some have been reassigned to other
families Family (from ) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictability, structure, and safety as ...
. One such example is '' Micropachycephalosaurus'', named by Dong for its apparent relationship to the better-known ''
Pachycephalosaurus ''Pachycephalosaurus'' (; meaning "thick-headed lizard", from Greek ''pachys-/'' "thickness", ''kephalon/'' "head" and ''sauros/'' "lizard") is a genus of pachycephalosaurid ornithischian dinosaur. The type species, ''P. wyomingensis'', ...
'', a link that other scientists were less inclined to believe. Studies by
Richard J. Butler Richard James Butler is a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Birmingham, where he holds the title of professor of palaeobiology. His research focuses on ornithischian dinosaur evolution, dinosaur origins, and fossil tetrapod macroe ...
, Qi Zhao, and other researchers cast doubt on Dong's placement of ''Micropachycephalosaurus'', and in 2011 the genus was reassigned to the suborder
Ceratopsia Ceratopsia or Ceratopia ( or ; Ancient Greek, Greek: "horned faces") is a group of herbivore, herbivorous, beaked dinosaurs that thrived in what are now North America, Asia and Europe, during the Cretaceous Period (geology), Period, although ance ...
. Dong is known among the palaeontological community for giving the dinosaurs he describes unusual names, such as '' T. nedegoapeferima'', where the specific name is derived from each of the main cast members from the 1993 film ''
Jurassic Park ''Jurassic Park'', later referred to as ''Jurassic World'', is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton, centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of De-extinction#Cloning, cloned dinosaurs. It bega ...
'' in recognition of a $25,000 USD donation to the IVPP by American director
Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg ( ; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is ...
. Likewise, the name he gave the genus ''Gasosaurus'' translates to "gas lizard", and ostensibly refers to the natural gas plant which was meant to be built on the Dashanpu hilltop where its fossils were discovered. In addition to this obvious meaning, the Mandarin word for "gas" can also be translated as "making trouble", an apparent reference to Zhiming's struggle with local authorities to preserve the fossil bone beds. Dong is considered an instrumental part of the reason that China has such an array of known
stegosaurid Stegosauria is a group of herbivorous ornithischian dinosaurs that lived during the Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. Stegosaurian fossils have been found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere (North America, Europe and Asia), Africa and South A ...
species. In the 2012 textbook ''The Complete Dinosaur'' (co-authored by researchers
M. K. Brett-Surman M, or m, is the thirteenth letter of the English alphabet. M may also refer to: Companies and products * M (fragrance), a 2008 fragrance by Mariah Carey * M-series rangefinder, a series of Leica camera models * M (virtual assistant), a form ...
, Thomas R. Holtz Jr., and James O. Farlow), Dong and his mentor Yang Zhongjian are praised for their efforts to advance palaeontology's understanding of stegosaurids:
Although the fossil record of stegosaurs for most of Asia is very fragmentary (Averianov et al. 2007; Maidment 2010), that of the People's Republic of China is the longest and most diverse (see Dong 1990, 1992; Olshevsky and Ford 1993; Galton and Upchurch 2004; Maidment et al. 2008; Maidment 2010). A partial skeleton of ''
Chialingosaurus ''Chialingosaurus'' (meaning " Chialing Lizard") is a genus of herbivorous stegosaurian dinosaur similar to ''Kentrosaurus'' from the Upper Shaximiao Formation, Late Jurassic beds in Sichuan Province in China. Its age makes it one of the oldest ...
'' was described by Chung Chien Young (1958) from the
Shangshaximiao Formation The Shaximiao Formation () is a Middle to Late Jurassic aged geological formation in Sichuan, China, most notable for the wealth of dinosaurs fossils that have been excavated from its strata. The Shaximiao Formation is exposed in and around the s ...
of
Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...
and, thanks to the efforts of Zhimin Dong, additional parts of this skeleton plus skeletons of two additional genera, ''
Chungkingosaurus ''Chungkingosaurus'', meaning "Chongqing Lizard", is a rather controversial genus of Herbivore, herbivorous dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Upper Shaximiao Formation in what is now China. It is a member of the Stegosauria. It is also a quadruped ...
'' and ''
Tuojiangosaurus ''Tuojiangosaurus'' (meaning " Tuo River lizard") is a genus of herbivorous stegosaurian dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period, recovered from the Upper Shaximiao Formation of what is now Sichuan Province in China. Description ''Tuojiangosau ...
'', are also known (Dong et al. 1983; Peng et al. 2005).
One of Dong's co-leaders on the China-Canada Dinosaur Project, Dale Russell, once claimed that Dong was the best fossil hunter he'd ever met, saying:
On any day of collecting, Dong will have two or three times as many as anyone else.
The
metriacanthosaurid Metriacanthosauridae (Greek for "moderately-spined lizards") is an extinct family of allosauroid theropod dinosaurs that lived in Europe and Asia from the Middle Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous. The family is split into two subgroups: Metriacant ...
'' Sinraptor dongi'', discovered during the China-Canada Dinosaur Project, was named for Dong Zhiming in 1994.


Personal life and death

While working as a surveyor in southwest China in the late 1960s, Dong married IVPP palaeoanthropologist Chen Dezhen. The two had two adult children who were raised by their grandparents while Dong and Chen pursued their careers. The couple lived in an apartment on the IVPP campus in Beijing before retiring to
Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...
in 2008. Dong died on 20 October 2024, at the age of 87.


Bibliography

Dong wrote or co-wrote a number of books on Chinese dinosaurs, including in English: * *


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dong, Zhiming 1937 births 2024 deaths Chinese paleontologists Educators from Shandong Academic staff of Jilin University Biologists from Shandong Fudan University alumni Writers from Weihai