American Museum of Natural History Research Library
author: American Museum of Natural History

From the Land of Dragons (Exhibition)
birth: 1988 July 22
death: 1989 January 1
Exhibition. Opened July 22, 1988 and closed January 1, 1989. Located in Section 4, Floor 1 in Gallery 1 at the American Museum of Natural History. From the Land of Dragons, a collaboration with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, featured 42 fossil reptiles from the People's Republic of China, 23 from the American Museum of Natural History and other institutions. It was curated by Eugene Gaffney and coordinated by Lowell Dingus of the Museum's Department of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Summary
From the Land of Dragons, a collaboration with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, featured 42 fossil reptiles from the People's Republic of China, 23 from the American Museum of Natural History and other institutions. It was curated by Eugene Gaffney and coordinated by Lowell Dingus of the Museum's Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. The fossils in the exhibition were divided into two major groups. The first consisted of turtles, crocodiles, birds, dinosaurs, and their extinct relatives. The other group included mammals and their extinct relatives. The exhibition illustrated how paleontologists use fossil characteristics to determine their relationship to one another and to modern groups (1, p. 1).
Related lectures were presented, including those by Eugene Gaffney, Gillian King, assistant curator of University Museum, Oxford University, Timothy Rowe, assistant professor of the Department of Geology at the University of Texas, and Jacques Gauthier, assistant curator of the Department of Herpetology of the California Academy of Sciences (1, p. 3). Eugene Gaffney served as moderator.
Highlights included fossil skeletons and a film (1 p. 2):
*A 24-foot rock slab with the skeletons of nine dicynodonts
*Dinosaurs, including a 40-foot Datousaurus, a 15-foot Lufengosaurus, and a Psittacosaurus
*Primitive archosaurs, including skeletons of a Chasmatosaurus and a Shansisuchus
*A skeleton of the pterosaur Dzungaripterus
*Keichosaurus, a marine reptile
*Sinoconodon, one of the oldest known mammals
*Juxia, a primitive rhinoceros
*A video presentation of the American Museum of Natural History's Asian expeditions during the 1920s, as well as contemporary excavations by Chinese scientists
This is a condensed summary of the exhibition. For additional information, see Sources and/or Related Resources.