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Nature 414, 571 (6 December 2001) | doi:10.1038/414571a

Wandering Chinese fossil turns up at museum

Rex Dalton

A controversial Chinese dinosaur fossil, which has meandered for years through the international underground world of dealers, has been bought by a leading German museum, the institution's director said last week.The psittacosaurid fossil — with a tail clad in spines reminiscent of the quills of a porcupine, never before seen on such specimens — is now at the Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt, acknowledged palaeontologist Fritz Steininger.