Of the 12 heads, five are now in Beijing's Poly Museum, donated to the country by Hong Kong magnate Stanley Ho, who bought them on the private market.

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The trip included visits to the forbidden city and great wall of China in Beijing, the terra cotta warrior museum in Xi An and the Bund and French Concession in Shanghai.

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"Darwinopterus came as quite a shock to us, " said David Unwin, from the University of Leicester's School of Museum Studies, which identified the creature, along with researchers from the Geological Institute of Beijing.

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