[Getready]

Last 10 years it would seem that many fossil finds are from
China....the bird dinosaur, and some ancient “men”...I think
one of the bird-dinosaur fossil was a farce, though.....
Where’s my tin foil hat, but I’m not sure so many major discoveries
could be in China. What about other landspaces on the earth?
Just thinking about the law of averages that’s all...

[quickquiver]

Any discoveries in America are covered up, I hear. Just in case they are natives!!!

[Boogieman]

The problem with Chinese fossils is that most of them are’t excavate by scientists, they are sold on the black market by illegal fossil hunters. When that happens, there’s no provenance, no way of knowing if the bones come from the same site, or have been altered. Unless the scientists can track down where they were dug up, go there and excavate themselves and find similar fossils, they are permanently questionable.

[PIF]

Early paleontologists in the US and other countries explored sites using dynamite. Who knows how many fossils where destroyed in this process. Interior China was spared because it was dangerous and too remote.

Just saying.

[SunkenCiv]

It’s not the law of averages, it has to do with China’s isolation from the sciences beginning with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and not ending until Mao kicked off. The economic transformation Mao was never able or willing to accomplish has been underway for thirty or so years, and China’s got about a sixth of the world’s population and better higher ed. There’s also a nationalist need to stake a claim to its own history and prehistory, much as the US did with the dinosaurs, and the colonial powers did in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and elsewhere.

Thanks PIF.