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Hong Kong's First Dinosaur Fossils, Likely from Large Dinosaur, Go on Display

A child looks at dinosaur figurines displayed at the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre during an exhibition featuring a rock containing dinosaur bone fossils discovered for the first time, in Hong Kong, China October 25, 2024. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
A child looks at dinosaur figurines displayed at the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre during an exhibition featuring a rock containing dinosaur bone fossils discovered for the first time, in Hong Kong, China October 25, 2024. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
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Hong Kong's First Dinosaur Fossils, Likely from Large Dinosaur, Go on Display

A child looks at dinosaur figurines displayed at the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre during an exhibition featuring a rock containing dinosaur bone fossils discovered for the first time, in Hong Kong, China October 25, 2024. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu
A child looks at dinosaur figurines displayed at the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre during an exhibition featuring a rock containing dinosaur bone fossils discovered for the first time, in Hong Kong, China October 25, 2024. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

The first dinosaur fossils found in Hong Kong, likely from a large dinosaur, were put on display on Friday after they were found on a small, uninhabited outlying island, providing new evidence for research on palaeoecology in the financial hub.

The fossils, confirmed to be dated to the Cretaceous period some 145 million to 66 million years ago, need further study to confirm the dinosaur species, authorities said, but it was clear they were large vertebrate animals.

They were found on Port Island, located in the northeast of Hong Kong and known for its red rock formations, Reuters reported.

The city's Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said in March the sedimentary rock on Port Island may contain fossils.

China's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) this week signed an agreement to conduct further research, Reuters reported.

In addition to Argentina, Canada and the United States, China is one of the four main countries in the world for both finding and researching dinosaur fossils, said Michael Pittman, an assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“This extremely exciting discovery now adds local dinosaur fossils to Hong Kong’s strong existing track record of dinosaur research. I hope it inspires greater interest in science and nature in our community and will lead to notable scientific outcomes,” Pittman said.

At the Heritage Discovery Centre inside Hong Kong's Kowloon Park, eager fans gathered early on Friday to catch a glimpse of the fossils.

Chong Got, 66, was one of the first to arrive.

"It's shocking because I never thought there would be dinosaur fossils in Hong Kong."

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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)

We watch video after video, consuming the world on our handheld devices in bites of two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15. We turn to moving pictures — “film” — because it comes the closest to approximating the world that we see and experience. This is, after all, 2024, and video in our pocket — ours, others', everyone's — has become our birthright.
But sometimes — even in this era of live video always rolling, always recording, always capturing — sometimes the frozen moment can enter the eye like nothing else. And in the process, it can tell a larger story that echoes long after the moment was captured. That's what happened this past week in Beirut, through the camera lens of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and the photographs he captured.
When Hussein set up his camera outside an evacuated Beirut apartment building Tuesday after Israel announced it would be targeted as part of military operations against Hezbollah, he had one goal in mind — only one. "All I thought of," he says, “was photographing the missile while it was coming down.”
He found a safe spot. He ensured a good angle. He wasn't stressed, he said; like many photographers who work in such environments, he had been in situations like this one before. He was ready.
When the attack came — a bomb, not a missile in the end — Hussein swung into action. And, unsurprisingly for a professional who has been doing this work for two decades, he did exactly what he set out to do.
Time slowed down
The sequence of images he made bursts with the explosive energy of its subject matter.
In one frame, the bomb hangs there, a weird and obtrusive interloper in the scene. It is not yet noticed by anyone around it, ready to bring its destruction to a building that, in moments, will no longer exist. The building's balconies, a split-second from nonexistence, are devoid of people as the bomb finds its mark.
These are the kind of moments that video, rolling at the speed of life or even in slow motion, cannot capture in the same way. A photo holds us in the scene, stops time, invites a viewer to take the most chaotic of events and break it down, looking around and noticing things in a strangely silent way that actual life could not.
In another frame, one that happened micro moments after the first, the building is in the process of exploding. Let's repeat that for effect, since even as recently as a couple generations ago photographs like this were rare: in the process of exploding.
Pieces of building are shooting out in all directions, in high velocity — in real life. But in the image they are frozen, outward bound, hanging in space awaiting the next seconds of their dissolution — just like the bomb that displaced them was doing milliseconds before. And in that, a contemplation of the destruction — and the people it was visited upon — becomes possible.
Tech gives us new prisms to see the world
The technology to grab so many images in the course of little more than one second — and do it in such clarity and high resolution — is barely a generation old.
So to see these “stills,” as journalists call them, come together to paint a picture of an event is a combination of artistry, intrepidity and technology — an exercise in freezing time, and in giving people the opportunity to contemplate for minutes, even hours, what took place in mere seconds. This holds true for positive things that the camera captures — and for visitations of violence like this one as well.
Photography is random access. We, the viewers of it, choose how to see it, process it, digest it. We go backward and forward in time, at will. We control the pace and the speed at which dizzying images hurtle at us. And in that process, something unusual for this era emerges: a bit of time to think.
That, among many other things, is the enduring power of the still image in a moving-picture world — and the power of what Bilal Hussein captured on that clear, sunny day in Beirut.