Kalasin
Thailand's dinosaur heartland—Phu Kum Khao holds 120-million-year-old sauropods, the Sirindhorn Museum (2007) converts deep time into tourism, and 2023 brought species #14.
Kalasin's most valuable resources are 120 million years old. At Phu Kum Khao—Thailand's largest dinosaur site—sauropod fossils lie scattered across Sahatsakhan District, remnants of creatures that roamed when Isan was tropical wetland. The 2023 discovery at Phu Noi of a basal neornithischian added Thailand's 14th dinosaur species. The Sirindhorn Museum, opened 2007 in partnership with Japan, transforms deep time into tourist revenue.
The province itself is young by comparison: established only in 1947, carved from neighboring Roi Et. Today over 90% of residents remain rural, working agricultural land rather than tourism infrastructure. But paleontology has become economic identity. Local weavers produce dinosaur dolls from traditional Pha Khao Ma fabric; community programs along the Sahatsakhan Dino Road share excavation revenues with surrounding villages. The provincial slogan invokes "million-year dinosaurs" alongside Phu Thai culture and Phrae Wa silk.
Kalasin demonstrates how geological inheritance can generate present value—unlike depleted resources that subtract wealth, fossils appreciate through discovery. Each new excavation adds to a resource base that existed before humans, before agriculture, before the Mekong carved its current channel. The sauropods paid nothing to accumulate here; their descendants in bone extract rent without depletion. Economic logic rarely operates on such timescales.