Paleontologist's passion stays rooted in the past

In December 2016, Xing's team announced the unprecedented discovery, the first time dinosaur material had been found fossilized in amber. It was the world's top fossil find that year.

Dinosaur fossils preserved in amber are more precious than those in rock, as amber can hold the soft tissue, which can indicate what a dinosaur looked like, Xing said.

Xing's passion started in childhood with a book given to him by his grandfather. He was thrilled by the dinosaur stories and read them again and again.

In high school, he built a website sharing dinosaur information and news from home and abroad. It soon attracted amateurs and specialists.

Dong Zhiming, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, praised the website as "an important platform for professionals to learn the latest discoveries and research trends of paleontology".

At the time, few were aware it was the work of a 16-year-old student from Guangdong province.

In the eyes of his parents, however, studying dinosaurs was not a lucrative career. They chose finance as his major in university.

Xing grew bored after graduation and applied to study paleontology overseas. He became a student of Philip Currie, a Canadian paleontologist and real-life version of Alan Grant, a character in the Jurassic Park movies.

His chief obsession is footprint study, which Xing describes as similar to a criminal investigation.

"Just as the police can estimate the height and weight of a suspect by footprints taken at the scene of a crime, we can use fossilized footprints to estimate a dinosaur's species, walking speed and even environmental information of the dinosaur era," Xing said.

However, fossil hunters sometimes are treated with suspicion.