Two fossils of wild donkeys on display at the Daqing Museum in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province Photo: VCG

 Chinese researchers have found a group of animal fossils dating back 25 million years in Northwest China's Gansu Province.

The fossils are of significance for the study of the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, according to archaeologists.

Researchers with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University, discovered fossils of two rhinoceros types, three types of ruminants, as well as many small mammals dating back to the late Oligocene period, in the city of Hezuo.

Animal fossils belonging to the same era have also been found in other prefectures in the province, as well as the regions of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, but Hezuo has a significantly higher altitude than those places, said Wang Shiqi, a researcher with the IVPP.

"That indicates a significant uplift in Hezuo, which lies at the northeastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau," he added.