Michael Pittman, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who specializes in dinosaur studies, said he was “very excited” about the landmark discovery, which researchers had “long expected.”
“It’s difficult to find dinosaur bones in general,” Pittman said, adding that he had been to Port Island himself but had had no luck. “You have to find the right rocks. They have to be the right age and the right environment.”
Pittman said he hasn’t seen the fossils yet but hopes Hong Kong can find more, adding that the one discovered so far, a “relatively small” piece, would be part of a bigger skeleton that would be “meters of meters long.”
Until now, all the fossils studied in Hong Kong were from other places, Pittman said, noting that China, the United States, Canada and Argentina are the four global “powerhouses” of dinosaur paleontology where experts find the most fossils.
“Now we can say that in Hong Kong, as well as having a strong track record of dinosaur research, we actually can contribute fossils,” he said. “It’s fantastic news.”
In the nearby Chinese province of Guangdong, four types of dinosaur fossils and more than 30,000 dinosaur egg fossils have been discovered.