Studies on the Jehol Biota Honored

摘要

A group of paleontologists headed by Chen Peiji and Zhang Haichun from the CAS Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology recently received a first prize of the 2004 Awards for S&T Progress issued by east China's Jiangsu Province for their pioneering research into the world-famous fossils of the Jehol Biota and stratigraphy concerned. In the late Mesozoic era. there existed a freshwater biogeo-graphic province represented by the Jehol Biota on the ancient continents of east Asia, With the size about today's Europe, the Biota left a cornucopian trove of well-preserved fossils in a great number featuring kaleidoscopic diversity, such as those of macroplants, polynomorphs, charophytes, dinoflagellates, conchostracans, ostracods, insects, nodostracans, spiders, shrimps, bivalves, gastropoda, dinosaurs, primitive mammals, birds and other vertebrate animals. So, it is of critical significance to probe these fossilized remains for understanding the bio-diversity in the ancient time and solving some longstanding bio-evolutionary puzzles, such as the origin of birds, angiosperms and their early paleo-biogeographic distribution.