Chongqing Museum of Natural History

Established in 1930, the Museum of Natural History is located on the Loquat Hill in central Yuzhong District. It collects over 80, 000 valuable natural specimens of, for example, animals, plants, ancient living beings, and ancient human being, especially the fossils of dinosaur skeleton, footprint, and eggs. It is well-known in China and even the world for the large numbers and great varieties of specimens there.

Belonging to the Mamenxi dinosaur of the sauropod family, the dinosaur lived in the late Jurassic period about 130 million years ago. According to Zhang Yihong, a research member with the museum, the dinosaur fossil, which is well preserved, is 18 meters long and the height of its back is 3.5 meters, is the largest and the most intact fossil ever discovered in Asia. The Mamenxi dinosaur is named after a dinosaur fossil unearthed in 1957 in Hechuan City, Chongqing Municipality. As a particular dinosaur species that lived in East Asia, the Mamenxi dinosaur bloomed in the late Jurassic period about 150 million years ago and became extinct in the Cretaceous period.