The China-Canada Dinosaur Project (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 palaeontological expeditions carried out by scientists from China and Canada.
History
Background
In the 19th and early-20th centuries, foreign and domestic researchers - including Roy Chapman Andrews and Yang Zhongjian - made many dinosaur-related discoveries in China and Mongolia, particularly in the Gobi Desert. This changed with the rise of the Chinese Communist Party and establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, which saw Chinese academia reorganized and some fields, including anthropology, fall out of favour over their perceived ties to imperialism. The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing had many of its students reassigned onto other projects, such as the Down to the Countryside Movement, but began to rebuild in the mid-1970s with the reestablishment of the institute's journal Vertebrata PalAsiatica and monumental discoveries like the Dashanpu bonebeds. Chinese palaeontologist Dong Zhiming became prominent in the organization following the death of Yang Zhongjian, his mentor and the "father of Chinese vertebrate paleontology".
A period of economic and political reforms known as the "Opening of China" in the West led to scientific cooperation beginning between researchers in the country and abroad, drawing the attention of Canadian researchers. While establishing the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in 1982, Provincial Museum of Alberta palaeontologist Philip J. Currie suggested to communications consultant Brian Noble that the Gobi Desert was an ideal location for discovering dinosaur fossils. Noble received an $8,000 CAD grant from the Canada Council to begin a feasibility study into creating a cultural program that could facilitate joint research missions by Canadian and Chinese palaeontologists, and in 1984 founded the Ex Terra Foundation, an Edmonton-based non-profit. Noble would remain executive director of the foundation for the duration of its existence, later bringing on Kevin Taft to serve as CEO from 1986 to 1991.
Creation
The China-Canada Dinosaur Project (CCDP) was formally launched by the Ex Terra Foundation in 1985 to organize cooperative expeditions between the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, the IVPP in Beijing, and the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta with the support of the provincial government of Alberta, the federal government of Canada, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Inner Mongolia Museum. Canadian Airlines International provided transportation to China for Canadian researchers involved in the project.
The stated mission of the Dinosaur Project was to improve the understanding of dinosaurs from North America and Asia by conducting field work in the Canadian Arctic, the Gobi Desert, the Junggar Basin, and other places of interest over the course of the following eight years. Philip J. Currie of the Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, Dong Zhiming of the IVPP, and Dale Russell of the Canadian Museum of Nature served as project leads for the CCDP. Dong Zhiming and Sun Ailing of the IVPP visited Alberta in October–November 1985. The project's official logo featured the English word "dinosaur" adjacent to its Chinese translation: "恐龙".
Field work
Field work related to the China-Canada Dinosaur Project began in May 1986 with an eight-day expedition to the Gobi Desert, the first to involve Western scientists since 1930. In the early summer a larger-scale reconnaissance mission was led by Currie, Dong, and Russell in which they and their team travelled across the Gobi to identify sites of interest for dig teams in the future. This three-week excursion was the first major operation of the Dinosaur Project and marked the first use of eight Jeeps granted to the CCDP by the Toronto-based Donner Canadian Foundation. The team also visited fossil sites in Alberta, Montana, and the Arctic, with their first fossil-collecting mission occurring in Dinosaur Provincial Park in July, where the project's first major find - a troodontid braincase - was made by Tang Zhilu.
The 1987 field season was extremely productive for the CCDP. Between August and October, the team uncovered fossils which would later serve as the holotypes for Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum and Sinraptor dongi in China, and began work on the Devil's Coulee fossil site discovered earlier in the summer by Wendy Sloboda in Canada.