Chinese villagers ate dinosaur 'dragon bones'

[mabfan55]

I found a interesting News story online i taught it would be good to share...

Link : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19606626/?GT1=10150

Villagers dug up prehistoric bones believing they were from flying creatures

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.

[rabid_fox]

Well, that makes sense. China - they got skill, yo.

[RJ]

...For some reason I'm not surprised by this.

But at least they weren't killing tigers for medicine.

[Netrogo]

What baffles me is that they were making medicine and junk out of it. I mean dinosaur bones are more rock then bone from petrification aren't they?

[techmaster-glitch]

I think only wood petrifies...

EDIT: Just checked. Yeah, I doubt bones petrify. What happnes in the petrification process is the soft organic materials get slowly replaced with minerals. That's why it only seems to hapen with trees; carcasses are either devoured or biodegrade far too fast for petrification to even begin, and bones aren't made up of enough soft organic material to be leeched out and replaced with minerals. The insides of a bone, the marrow, might petrify, but I honestly don't know for sure.

EDIT EDIT: here's the exact article...

Petrified wood is a type of fossil: it consists of fossil wood where all the organic materials have been replaced with minerals (most often a silicate, such as quartz), while retaining the original structure of the wood. The petrifaction process occurs underground, when wood becomes buried under sediment. Mineral-rich water flowing through the sediment deposits minerals in the plant's cells and as the plant's lignin and cellulose decay away, a stone mould forms in its place. The wood is preserved due to a lack of oxygen.

[rabid_fox]

What baffles me is that they were making medicine and junk out of it. I mean dinosaur bones are more rock then bone from petrification aren't they?

Calcium, baby. It's all about dem bones. It's like water that's passed through limestone caves - it picks up a lot of calcium...phosphate, I believe (this is going back a few years now) and is referred to as 'hard water'...it's much more tasty and beneficial for the health than highly filtered water.

[EvilIguana966]

I have to wonder, with regards to the medicinal properties of ground up bones, whether there is not some science behind the superstition.  Calcium and maybe other trace minerals found in the fossils are necessary for healthy growth.  If the people in the area are deficient in calcium it seems plausible that any source of it could have meaningful positive effects on a person's health, reinforcing their practices. 

As for the paleontological value of the items, most people who find the stuff sell it to other people.  I don't think they'd have any problems selling their finds to scientists instead of people who will destroy them.  As it turns out, western scientists pay well both for items of interest, and for accommodations while studying items of interest in situ.  These people will likely learn quickly that natural and cultural artifacts are far more valuable intact, assuming the Chinese government doesn't shut that idea down.  The communist party tends to keep foreigners away from the rural areas of the country whenever possible, lest they discover the more unsavory aspects of the regime. 

While we're on the subject of antiquities and the PRC, it's worthwhile to note that the communist party itself been a far bigger danger to the cultural and natural heritage of the nation than any backwards rural villager.  Mao had immeasurable volumes of priceless items, as well as millions of people, destroyed during the cultural revolution in an effort to separate the Chinese from any identity other than that of a member of the communist party.  Ancient customs were to be replaced with total subservience to Mao and his socialist system. 

[King Of Hearts]

heck IIRC the Soviets once ate on frozen mammoth meat a while back.

[Valynth]

I think only wood petrifies...

EDIT: Just checked. Yeah, I doubt bones petrify. What happnes in the petrification process is the soft organic materials get slowly replaced with minerals. That's why it only seems to hapen with trees; carcasses are either devoured or biodegrade far too fast for petrification to even begin, and bones aren't made up of enough soft organic material to be leeched out and replaced with minerals. The insides of a bone, the marrow, might petrify, but I honestly don't know for sure.

Considering all bone starts as cartilage, one could argue that bones are petrified by the body with calcium being the main mineral used.

So bones are petrified already, it just was just performed durring life rather than after.  This leads me to conclude that I've got fossils in my body!...  I wonder how much they're worth.... 

[techmaster-glitch]

Well, calcium is a mineral, so by technical definition...
You're right, all bones are already petrified while still inside a body!

[Feroluce]

hmm, Im not sure on this one either. from memory fossilization leaves behind no trace of the actual creature, but different types of rock that assume the shape of the creature's bones. but I have a bad memory for this aspect of science, so Im not really sure. probably not, since they are quoted as being "Calcium Rich", which is why it would help with both the cramps and bone knitting.

as far as fossils in your body go.. o.o maybe. bones are Cal Phosphate crystals set in an organic matrix tho, so Im not sure.

[techmaster-glitch]

Well, you're right, the traditional "fossile" is basically the rock mold type, though other things are classified as "fossils", like intact skeletons, amber gems with some bug trapped inside, ect. ect., and petrified trees.

[Feroluce]

Well, you're right, a typical fossile is basiclally a rock mold, though other things are classified as "fossils", like intact skeletons, amber gems with some bug trapped inside, ect. ect., and petrified trees.

ahh, ok. makes more sense then, I guess.

[Reese Tora]

Well, you're right, the traditional "fossile" is basically the rock mold type, though other things are classified as "fossils", like intact skeletons, amber gems with some bug trapped inside, ect. ect., and petrified trees.

amber gems? *wonders when the DMFA comics became classified as fossils*
though some of the older work can take some digging to turn up.

Seriously, The Chinese people, and I think Asian people in general, have used ground fossils as medicine for some time.  The elgends of dragons are very old, possibly caused by intact fossils discovered in the past, and dragons have a certain mysticism around them.

Considering the folk beliefs surrounding the curative properties in "dragon bones," I'm more surprised that people actually donated them to researchers.

China is funny about research... they claim to have a site that proves china to have the oldest known examples of a certain ancestor of humans, but they won't let researchers not of thier state examine the site... either for fear that it turns out wrong(or that they're caught in a lie... most likely ) or because they think someone will sabatoge the site so thier claim can't be verified...