China sentences two to death over melamine milk

BEIJING, January 22 (RIA Novosti) - A Chinese court has sentenced two people to death and three others to life behind bars over last year's melamine-tainted milk scandal, the Xinhua news agency said on Thursday.

The contaminated milk powder killed at least six children and left another 300,000 ill. The melamine was added to the milk in order to make it appear richer in protein.

The court sentenced Zhang Yujun to death for producing the tainted milk in the Shandong province in eastern China. Geng Jinping was handed the death sentence for selling toxic food to dairy companies.

Another man, Gao Junjie, was also condemned to death, but his sentence has been suspended for two years and could be later converted to life.

Tian Wenhu, the female head of the Sanlu dairy giant at the center of the scandal, was sentenced to life in prison and a $2.9 million fine, Xinhua said. The Sanlu Group was accused of knowing that it was selling toxic milk, and Wenhu pleaded guilty to the charges against her. Two men were also given life sentences.

Six others, including Sanlu employees, were given sentences ranging from five years to 15 years. Another 39 people are still awaiting trial.

The toxic milk scandal led to a ban on Chinese-produced dairy products in Asia, Europe and North America.

World's largest dinosaur fossil field discovered in Shandong

Scientists in east China's Shandong province have discovered what they think could be the world's largest dinosaur fossil field.

So far, the site located in Zhucheng city has produced 7,600 fossils, and more are expected to be found, Zhao Xijin, a paleontologist from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua.

Not only is the field significant in terms of its vast quantity of fossils, but also in the evolutionary sense, as it may help provide an answer as to why dinosaurs disappeared, Zhao said.

Most of the fossils in the area date from the Late Cretaceous of the Mesozoic Period, when dinosaurs became extinct, Xinhua writes.

In the 1960s, a number of duck-billed hadrosaurus fossils were discovered in the area during an oil expedition. The largest one, discovered two decades later, is currently on display in the local museum. Since then, more than 50 tons of fossils have been unearthed there, according to Xinhua.

Last March, several fossil fields were discovered in the towns of Longdu, Shunwang, Jiayue and Zhigou during mining expeditions. The Longdu field alone has so far yielded more than 3,000 fossils, one of them being a 2-meter-long skull of a large ceratopsian, the first one discovered outside of North America, Xu Xing, a researcher from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, told Xinhua.

New genera of ankylosaurus, tyrannosaurus and ceolurus have also been found in the area, Xu said.

According to Zhao, in the time of the dinosaurs, the area might have had abundant water resources and grasslands, which made it an ideal habitat for duck-billed dinosaurs. Researchers say that a volcanic eruption could have caused the dinosaurs' extinction, and that a subsequent flood could have brought the fossils to the current site.

China, which has seen a rapid rise in the number of rare fossils unearthed on its territory in recent years, is facing a growing smuggling problem. Last January, hundreds of kilograms of Chinese dinosaur fossils were recovered from warehouses and cargo containers in sting operations in Australia, according to Reuters.

Excavation in Shandong has been suspended for the winter months, but will resume in the spring, Reuters says. A report of the findings will be published at the end of next year, Zhao said.

Shandong has plans to build a fossil park on the site.

Textsource: Xinhua, Reuters