The country's first pterosaur museum will be established in Hami prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, to display the precious collection of fossils found there, the local government said on Nov 3.

Also on the same day, the prefecture government and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences opened a pterosaurs exhibition that will run for two to three months at Hami Museum.

Some of the pterosaur fossils and eggs being exhibited were unearthed from a site 100 kilometers south of the prefecture, which, according to scientists, is the best site for pterosaur fossils in the world.

"Since bones of pterosaurs are fragile and difficult to preserve, there are generally few well-preserved fossils that could help us reproduce the scene of pterosaurs' lives," says Wang Xiaolin, a professor from the institute who discovered the pterosaur fossils and has been conducting research in Hami since 2005.

During the opening ceremony for the exhibition, the prefecture government and the institute also signed an agreement to jointly protect and develop the pterosaurs site.

The institute will actively explore and salvage the fossils of pterosaurs, dinosaurs and other ancient animals on the site, help the local government to establish a laboratory for specimen preparation, and open a pterosaurs museum - the first of its kind in China.

Alexander Kellner, a leading Brazilian paleontologist from Brazil's National Museum and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, says the pterosaur fossils found in Hami provide unique information.

"We can have a better understanding of how the pterosaur body changes from young to old. We could even observe morphological variation between sexes - males and females differ from the expression of their head crests, with males purportedly having larger crests and a more robust end of the snout."

Zhou Zhonghe, a leading paleontologist in China and director of the institute, says the local government and the institute should protect the unique pterosaur site in two ways.

"First, since the pterosaur site is already a famous tourist spot, we should protect the fossils from being stolen.

"Second, we have to carry out rescue excavation on those fossils that are already exposed to the windy and dusty weather of the desert," he says.