Dig almost anywhere around the town of Dashanpu (大山铺), just northeast of central Zigong, and you may hit bone. In the 1980s, geologists working here uncovered an astonishing Middle Jurassic graveyard — dinosaurs, plus the fish, turtles, crocodile relatives, and flying reptiles that lived alongside them, packed together in the Shaximiao Formation. Rather than cart the fossils off to a distant capital, China did something wonderful: it built the museum right on top of the bonebed.
A museum over an open grave
The Zigong Dinosaur Museum opened in 1987 — the first dinosaur museum in Asia, and one of only a handful in the world built at the fossil site itself. Inside, you walk over and around a real, partially excavated quarry, with skeletons still emerging from the rock exactly where they fell ~160 million years ago. It is one of the world’s three great dinosaur site museums, and National Geographic once hailed it as the best dinosaur museum in the world.
Why here? The Dashanpu site preserves an unusually complete community from the Middle Jurassic — a slice of time that is rare and patchy almost everywhere else on Earth. The diversity of species packed into this one Sichuan bonebed is considered, by some measures, unmatched globally.
Meet the locals
The quarry has yielded dozens of species, several named for the region, including:
- Dashanpusaurus — named directly for the township.
- Omeisaurus — a long-necked sauropod with an almost comically long neck.
- Gigantspinosaurus — a stegosaur famous for its enormous shoulder spines.
- Yangchuanosaurus — the big Jurassic predator of the region, a local T. rex stand-in.
Why it pairs with the lanterns
This is no coincidence of branding. Zigong leaned into being the “Home of Dinosaurs”, which is exactly why the lantern festival is the Dinosaur Lantern Festival, and why luminous sauropods stalk the New Year crowds. Salt built the city, dinosaurs gave it a second identity, and lanterns broadcast both to the world.
Good to know
The museum is ~7 km from downtown, easy to reach, and genuinely one of the best family outings in Sichuan. Allow a couple of hours, and don’t rush the main quarry hall — standing above a Jurassic riverbed full of bones is the kind of thing you remember for life.