"It's a dinosaur backbone!" One February morning, around 30 researchers and workers hammered away at an excavation site in the middle of sugar cane fields stretching beyond the horizon in Suranaree, about 260 km northeast of Bangkok.
Large rocks were first cut into pieces around 30 cm sq. and then broken into smaller pieces to comb through for fossils of dinosaur bones and teeth, as well as fish scales.
The project, in the central province of Nakhon Ratchasima, is a joint effort between the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum and Thailand's Khorat Fossil Museum. The excavation work has unearthed about 30,000 fossil pieces, including from newly discovered species, over the past six years.