The dragon is considered a very sacred animal in China. The emperors of ancient China considered themselves as the dragon. Even though it is an imaginary creature, Chinese people believe it really existed and worship it. They even believe if you eat dragon bones, you’ll become healthy. In fact, villagers in central China have been using dragon bones in traditional medicines! I know you are totally clueless what I’m talking about. Let me explain further.

Villagers in Henan province spent decades digging up bones they believed belonged to flying dragons and using them in traditional medicines. However, it turns out the bones belonged to dinosaurs, and now scientists are doing the digging. Scientist Dong Zhiming said that until last year, the fossils were being sold in the province as ＂dragon bones＂at about 25 cents a pound. The calcium-rich bones were sometimes boiled with other ingredients and fed to children to treat dizziness and leg cramps. Other times, they were ground up and turned into a paste applied directly to fractures and other injuries.

Over the last two decades, the villagers had dug up an estimated one ton of bones. Dong was part of a team that recently unearthed a 60-foot-long plant-eating dinosaur that lived 85 million to 100 million years ago in Henan’s Ruyang County.
According to Dong, when the villagers found out the bones were from dinosaurs last year, they donated 440 pounds to him and his colleagues for research. ＂They had believed that the dragon bones were from the dragons flying in the sky,＂said Dong, a professor with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.