A "stone" a | key laboratory parade

(1) Zhu Min (first from left) works in the field in Yunnan(2) Xinjiang Field Work (3) Ancient DNA Laboratory Team (4) China-U.S. Tibet Field Expedition(5) Hami Pteron Ecological Restoration Map(6) Laboratory Academic Committee(7) Main Dragon System Development - New Data and New Methods International SymposiumWhere and how is life on Earth produced and how? What determines species diversity? What genetic changes make a unique human being? How human cooperative behavior develops . . .
In 2005, Science conducted a survey of the current scientific challenges driving basic scientific research. Of the 25 most important questions, many are related to the evolution of life.
" can only lack the 'fish to man' this evolutionary main line of the problem. Zhu Min, director of the Key Laboratory for Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said.
"the reason of man" is the eternal question of heaven. Paleontology has revealed that vertebrates evolved as early as one of the oldest fish 530 million years ago.
In the dramatic and ups and downs of the evolution of "from fish to man", many key vertebrate fossils were first discovered by scholars from the Institute of Paleoververtebrates and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences( hereinafter referred to as the Institute of Paleontology) and are all marked on the map of paleontology research in the world.
paleontology research has become a "dance" between earth science and life sciences, not a single discipline in the past. The establishment of the Key Laboratory for Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origin 12 years ago not only witnessed the beginning of this collision, but also personally participated and brought new vitality to this ancient discipline.In the nearly 15 years since the beginning of this century, Zhu Min, a researcher at the Institute of Paleontbrates, with a team of early vertebrate research in China, has found crucial fossil evidence for the origin and early evolution of jawed animals, the origin and early evolution of hard-boned fish, and the origin of four-legged animals.
The significance of these fossils lies in solving some long-disputed theoretical problems in the field of palaeontology and evolutionary biology, such as the origin of the jaw, the appearance of human bones, the origin of the rigid bone fish, the origin of the meat finfish sub-gang, and so on, and has changed the academic community's inherent understanding of these important issues.
, which has the same weight as it does, is the study of the hot river biota led by Zhou Zhonghe, a member of the
Academy, and Xu Xing, deputy director of the Institute of Paleontical Spine. They have made a series of remarkable original achievements in the origin of birds and their flight and feathers, the evolution of dinosaurs, pterfish, early birds, mammals and amphibians.
ancient vertebrate institute is by virtue of China's unique vertebrate and human fossil resources and unique geological conditions, the international formation of "from fish to man" this vertebrate evolution of the main line of research advantage.
Xu Xing, an expert, told the China Science Daily that many of the institute's achievements and academic views have been adopted by authoritative Western textbooks. At the famous British Museum of Natural History, photographs of Yang Zhongjian, founder of Chinese Paleontology and the first director of the Institute of Paleontology, hang with darwin, Owen and other world-class scientific taidous, and he is the only scientist in Asia to receive this award.
compared with the 90-year-old paleovertebrate, the key laboratory of vertebrate evolution and human origin has only been established for a short period of 12 years, but both the research direction and the scientific research culture are in line with the ancient spine.
Zhu Min, said that the ancient spine has been the whole effort to "run" the laboratory.
recent years, major discoveries from key laboratories for vertebrate evolution and human origin have often been included in the annual major news between Science, Time and Discovery.
is an old little subject, why is it so influential in society?
fossils are important evidence of the evolution of life and the origin of mankind over the course of hundreds of millions of years, and there are countless difficulties about the evolution of life. Every discovery of important fossils is to expand the intellectual boundaries of all mankind. The Chinese palaeontologist's writing is an epic story of the flood age, which is not only about the past of the world, but also foreshadows its future. As a result, these results are often displayed more than people think.
" but the discovery of important fossils is not the same as making important research. Deng Tao, director of the Ancient Spine Institute, stressed.
" palaeontology is by no means a simple material science. On the basis of fossil discovery and species description, it is necessary to reconstruct the systematic development relationship of vertebrates and reveal the origin, morphological functional evolution and macro-evolution mechanism of important vertebrate groups. "He said, this is the real value of paleontological research, but also the connotation of laboratory research results.
fossils are the mark of dust, and finding a way to open it tests the insight of researchers. "If researchers don't have complete and deep knowledge accumulation, it's hard to see the role and key role of fossils in evolution, " Deng said. For
, the Key Laboratory for Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origin provides important support.
" compared with the same type of research institutions in the world, the research direction of our laboratory is the most complete, from vertebrates to human evolution chain in every part of the chain has sufficient scientific research personnel and resources. Deng Tao believes that this is why small areas can break down barriers, cooperation and communication anytime, anywhere, thus broadening the research horizons of researchers, and it is easier to spark ideas. In 2010, the genome sketch of the extinct Neanderthals was completed, and the story of human origin took a dramatic turn around around the world when Svante Pabo, director of the Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology at the Map Society of Germany, and 50 of his colleagues used paleoDNA research to reveal that all but Africans today carry Neanderthal genetic codes that have never completely disappeared.
paleontology is a very old subject, and it used to be generally accepted that its research methods and methods were updated more slowly than other disciplines. But classics don't mean sticking to tradition and stopping.
Zhu Min said that since the establishment of the Key Laboratory on Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origin, it has been exploring a more viable development strategy. "In the current field of evolutionary biology, the combination of ancient and modern, macro and micro has formed a new research trend, and is currently the key laboratory of vertebrate evolution and human origin of the most important development direction."
well known that great advances in the study of genomic structure have affected every aspect of life sciences, and palaeontology is no exception. "The last decade or so has been a golden age for paleont DNA research. Combining modern molecular biology with primitive fossil materials, we caught up with a good time. Zhou Zhonghe said.
2009, a team of professors from the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Institute of Paleontology and the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences established a joint laboratory on human evolution and scientific and technological archaeology with the direction of the ancient DNA platform. Pabo's doctoral student, Fu Qiaomei, formed a team of paleontologists belonging to China here, which opened a new direction in the study of paleontology in China.
, ancient human fossil DNA was poorly preserved, polluted and difficult to obtain effective genetic information. In 2013, Fu and Pabo team jointly developed a "fishing"-like ancient nuclear DNA capture method that sucks, collects and "fishes" only 0.03 percent of human DNA from large amounts of soil microbes.
2014, the team successfully obtained high-quality genome sequences from human bones about 45,000 years old in Siberia. The study not only suggests for the first time that modern ancestors entered Asia on a single southern route, but also determines when modern ancestors communicated with Neanderthal genes.
After, she began to integrate the Asian population into the history of human origin and evolution, mapping the genetic map of the Eurasian population during the Ice Age, and for the first time showing a complete demographic dynamic of the late Stone Age in the framework of space-time . . .
In May, a new study published in Science by Fu's team attracted widespread attention. It reveals the prehistoral differentiation pattern, integration process and migration history of the population in the north and south of China, and confirms the origin of the southern Chinese mainland of the South Island language group.
In the past 10 years, Fu Qiaomei has carried out extensive genetic sequencing work of ancient humans and their companion species, continuously enriched the ancient DNA database, and through the establishment of a high-level ancient DNA automation experimental platform and professional interdisciplinary research team, using bio-informatology and group genetics and other analytical methods, in-depth exploration of the origin of modern Eurasians, migration paths, evolution processes, environmental adaptation and genetic exchanges with ancient humans and other important scientific issues. She is confident that the team's current level of paleont DNA research can be achieved "and run" with foreign first-line research institutions.
The ancient DNA team of the Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins has a very different subject background and analysis method, Zhu Min believes that it is the highly open and inclusive cultural genes of the ancient spine that have won an opportunity to revitalised the paleoanthropological research that needs to be developed in an innovative way. In 2017, over a 12-year period, a team of researchers from the Institute of Paleontbra, Wang Weilin, rescued a specimen preserved by more than 200 pteroscope eggs, embryos and bone fossils in the chalk formation of the Hamigobi Desert in Xinjiang, 16 of which contained three-dimensional embryonic fossils.
100 million years ago, Hami was an unassailable "Pteron Eden", a discovery considered "one of the most exciting discoveries in pteron research in 200 years." Because such a wealth of pteron eggs and bone fossils are uniquely buried in the world.
in the Cretaceous, what happened on the land here?
Wang's team found that the Hami pterary egg and bone fossils were mainly from a set of gray-white lake-phase sandstones containing transverse instability, rich in red mud and debris, and that these huge pteros and pterron egg fossils are likely to have experienced multiple lakes. Storm events, this high-energy storm through the pteron's nest, pteron eggs and living in different sizes, gender pterons to the shore of the lake, after a short floating gathering, with the tearing scattered pterary remains were quickly buried.
analysis and research on the individual development, reproductive and ecological habits and buried environment of these pterons reveals the importance of the interaction and co-evolution of life and environment.
The evolution of vertebrates and humans has never been an isolated event, and some major environmental events and environmental evolutions in the course of evolutionary history have more and more attention from paleontologists.
the key laboratory of vertebrate evolution and human origin, Zhu Min has always adhered to the intersection and integration of palaeontology and other disciplines. On the basis of traditional bio-stratology, morphology, comparative anatomy and system development, it has become the mainstream of international academic circles to explore evolutionary issues in the fields of zoology, developmental biology, histology, physiology, molecular systems, geochemistry and so on.
10 years ago, Li Xiaoqiang, a researcher at the
Institute of Earth Environment, joined the cross-border "joining" to strengthen the research strength in the field of paleoanthropology evolution in key laboratories of vertebrate evolution and human origin. The laboratory is moving towards evolutionary ecology, reconstructing the processes and mechanisms of collaborative change between vertebrates and the environment in response to the country's major needs.
as deputy director of the laboratory, Li Xiaoqiang's mission is to study the interaction and collaborative evolution of terrestrial life and the environment from the perspective of the terrestrial ecosystem that began to form 400 million years ago. Using vertebrate fossils, plant fossils and other geological-biological indicators, the paper studies major geological and environmental events and their effects on the evolution of land-based biomes.
" Especially since the new generation, the climate environment has undergone many major changes, and China's new generation sedimentary basin development, rich ecological types, large number of fossil sites, large number of specimens, in the development of human and animal and environmental co-evolution research has unique conditions and irreplaceable resource advantages. Li Xiaoqiang said that it is the focus of this research to explore the influence and restriction of environmental evolution, especially major environmental events, on vertebrate evolution since the new generation, and to reveal the relationship between human origin evolution and environmental change.
In the past five years, the key laboratories of vertebrate evolution and human origin have gained many results in the fossil evidence of ancient environmental reconstruction, animal food evolution and environmental adaptation, when humans spread to the hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, how to adapt to and conquer extreme environments, neolithic agricultural transformation and human adaptation methods and strategies.
September 2017, the Center for Innovation in Biological Evolution and Environment, which is based on the Institute of Paleontology and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was officially approved for construction. Its establishment, around the forefront of paleontology, stratology and paleontology research cross-cutting areas, so that different disciplines due to convergence of great innovative vitality. largest laboratory in paleontology in the wild, which is the consensus of many palaeontologists. But back to the research institutions, want to finally unlock those unearthed fossils in the field contains the lost information, in addition to the intention, with the eye, but also high-tech "plus holding."
the 1980s,
, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, used continuous grinding to make waxy models while studying Yang's fish. The method is to grind off a thin layer on the fossil, draw a facet, grind off another layer, and draw a cut surface until the whole fossil is milled. A 2.8-centimeter-long fossil of a fish skull, Zhang Miman drew more than 540 facets, one of which could take more than a dozen hours.
later had high-precision CT equipment that could easily "deeply" observe the fossil's internal structure through scanning without any damage to the fossil itself.
more than a decade ago, the research and development and production of high-precision CT equipment has long been monopolized by foreign countries, the CT equipment of the ancient spine is very "chilling". In the eyes of Zhu Min, director of the laboratory, "everyone else is better than us."
key laboratories on vertebrate evolution and human origin