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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 mass and ideal geological conditions for finding fossils, the country is a palaeontologist's paradise.
The dangers Prof Xu faces while searching for dinosaur fossils in some of the remotest regions of China - ranging from lethal insects to fossil thieves and armed gangs - have led to his being compared to Indiana Jones, the fictitious archaeologist and action hero played by Harrison Ford in Steven Spielberg's films.
Similarities
"There are some similarities," the quiet-spoken professor said. "Palaeontology is different from other science because you're in the field in a harsh environment. But my day-to-day work when I'm not in the field is fairly boring. There's a lot of paperwork."
Prof Xu works at the Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology. His discoveries - some made personally on "digs", others as part of a team analysing the finds - have made him a star in the world of palaeontology.
"Xu has been incredibly successful, the result of excellent scholarship and an unerring ability to spot interesting new finds," said Dr Paul Barrett, a palaeontologist and expert on Chinese dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum in London, where he will host three public events on the topic this week.
"He is the most prolific discoverer of new dinosaur species alive today. Only a few historical figures have named more."
To do so, Prof Xu has had to travel to some of the harshest regions of the world.
Much of his work has been in the Gobi desert or in the remote, far-western province of Xinjiang, where scorpions, snakes and spiders abound and where it is usually either blazing hot or bitterly cold.
"You have to be very careful in the Gobi," he said. "There are lots of poisonous insects."
Despite the hazards, Prof Xu is a modest man who likes playing badminton and spending time with his wife and two sons.
But he does admit to having been inspired by Roy Chapman Andrews, an American palaeontologist and explorer who is reputed to have been the model for Indiana Jones. Like all palaeontologists working in China, he has to find the fossils before the thieves do.
A thriving black market means farmers who find fossils are tempted to sell them for many times their annual income. In January Australia returned millions of dollars worth dinosaur fossils it confiscated from traffickers.
Beijing's determination to crack down on such thefts reflects its realisation that dinosaurs can help boost its tourist trade, and the country is hoping Prof Xu's discoveries will help bring in more tourists after the Olympics.
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