Dinosaur museum in China sets new world record

Guinness World Records has confirmed that a dinosaur museum in China's Shandong province is the largest of its kind in the world.

The Shangdong Tianyu Museum of Nature, which opened in 2004 and is devoted to dinosaur and other prehistoric fauna, applied for a Guinness World Record entry in June and received the confirmation Monday, said Yin Shiyin, deputy curator of the museum.

"It contains 28,000 sq metres of exhibition space, housing 1,106 dinosaur specimens and thousands of other ancient fossils," Xinhua quoted London-based Guinness as saying in a certificate given to the museum.

The dinosaur specimens are all represented by almost complete skeletons, including 368 psittacosaurid specimens, 391 dromaeosaurid specimens, 255 anchiornis specimens, 22 jeholosaurus specimens, and 70 other unnamed dinosaur fossils, according to the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Before the new record, the museum had five other world records, including the longest silicified wood fossil, the biggest sinosauropteryx fossil and the biggest amethyst cave, Yin said.

A ceremony to celebrate the recognition as the world's largest dinosaur museum will be held in September at Tianyu.