Land of dragon eyes tourist bounty in dinosaur finds

A mild-mannered Chinese professor is being hailed as one of the world's top palaeontologists for his part in the discovery of 30 dinosaur species over the past 15 years. Now Beijing hopes Xu Xing's work will help attract a new species of tourist to China - the kind for whom a fossilised raptor holds more appeal than the country's millennia of human history and culture. Prof Xu, 39, specialises in the winged and feathered dinosaurs that were the ancestors of today's birds. His discoveries include creatures such as the "gigantoraptor", a 11/2-tonne beast that is the largest birdlike dinosaur found so far, the four-winged "microraptor" and the buck-toothed and tiny "incisivosaurus". Prof Xu's achievement has boosted the prestige of Chinese scientists, who struggle to compete with their Western counterparts. With its vast land... [read full story]