The Belgians reported that most of the vertebrate remnants they had found at excavation sites by the Amur River, near the Chinese border, belong to representatives of the Amurosaurus riabini (hadrosaur) species, which inhabited the Earth some 65 million years ago.
Until now, hadrosaur remnants have been found only in North America. The hadrosaur was a large, bipedal dinosaur measuring 23-32 feet long and weighing 5 metric tons. The creature was an herbivore and moved quadrupedaly when feeding.
Dinosaur fossils were for the first time unearthed near the Amur River in 1902, by a colonel of Russia's imperial army. A Russian paleontological expedition a decade later yielded more such finds.
In the mid-'20s, all excavations in the Amur area were suspended. Russian and Belgian researchers mounted their first joint expedition here in 1999 and discovered the whole skeleton of a duckbilled mammoth (Olorotitan arharensis).
