CHENGDU, Sept. 11 -- A nationwide industry alliance was founded Wednesday in the city of Zigong, southwest China's Sichuan Province, to promote dinosaur-themed culture and tourism.

The first batch of members includes 47 dinosaur museums across the country, research institutes of fossils, and practitioners in the dinosaur-related cultural tourist industry.

Zigong is home to the Jurassic period site Dashanpu, where workers building a parking lot unearthed a large number of dinosaur fossils in 1979.

"There is a development bottleneck for dino museums and natural history museums with dino shows," said Li Jian, curator of the Zigong Dinosaur Museum. "If you don't bring in cultural and tourist elements, it's difficult to find funding."

The museum was built on top of the fossil site and is home to the remains of almost all the dinosaur species that lived between 205 million to 135 million years ago.

The newly established alliance is expected to create an industrial ecosystem that bonds museums, research and popular science institutions, animatronic dino manufacturers and travel companies together, Li added.