Language: Chinese with scientific nomenclature and 12-page English abstract
In August 1964, a comprehensive research party of the Bureau of Petroleum Geology, Ministry of Geology, China, discovered a new fossiliferous site and collected some fossil remains from the Cretaceous beds in Zhucheng County, Shandong Province. These fossils include tibia bone of a fairly large-sized hadrosaur. Later excavations were made at the same site in 1964, 1965, 1966 and 1968 by the Institute of Geolgoy and the Museum of Geology, as a result of which a large quantity about thirty tons of dinosaur bones were collected. The fossils were found in a layer of greyish green conglomeratic sandstone, belonging to the Wangshi Group of the late Cretaceous age. The site lies at the end of a gully named Longgujian which is about one kilometer north of Kugou village in the district of Lubiao, Zhucheng County. All fossils were excavated from a single quarry, from which the bones had been disarticulated during deposition. Among the collections there are about ten more or less preserved maxillae, five right and five left ones, which represent at least five individuals of hadrosaurians in the quarry.
After preparation of the dinosaur bones a omposite skeleton was mounted, and displayed in the Palaeontological Hall of the Beijing Museum of Natural History from April 1972 to October 1982. The mounted skeleton is about 1470 cm in length. As some of the fossil remains were somewhat obscured after the mounting of the skeleton and the time for their study was limited, only a preliminary investigation was made. A new generic and specific name Shantungosaurus giganteus was proposed in a paper published in 1973. The composite skeleton is preserved in the National Geological Museum of China and designated by Catalogue number V 1780. This book describes the osteological features of the bones and other details of this find.