A piece of leg bone fossil from an unidentified animal was discovered Saturday at a construction site at Beijing airport.

The mysterious bone is 1.15 meters in length and resembles cattle leg. The diameter of its knee joint is some 30 centimeters, said construction worker Xu, from Beijing Urban Construction Group, who happened to find the fossil and measured it with a scale.

The brown fossil weighs 20 kg and was excavated from 18 meters below the ground surface. "It doesn't look like a bone from a currently existing animal," said eye witnesses.

There was once a river flowing through the area of the construction site, and local tales say mammoth and other huge animals lived here approximately 100,000 years ago.

Beijing Urban Construction Group, which is in charge of the airport construction work, has already contacted the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics (BMBCR) for further study on the bone, according to the Group.

Incomplete skeletons from unidentified huge animals have been spotted frequently in local construction works in recent years. Extensive research is still required to determine the species of the bones, said a BMBCR expert.
 
(Xinhua News Agency November 10, 2004)