On Some Examples of Missing Links – Perspectives from Fossil Evidence in China

and received his Ph.D. degree with honors at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of the University of Kansas in 1999. He returned to China in 1999 with the support of the " Hundred Talents Project " of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His main research interest is on the origin and early evolution of birds, feathers, and bird flight. He is also involved in the study of Mesozoic fishes, feathered dinosaurs, pterosaurs, biostratigraphy and the evolution of the Jehol Biota, and reconstruction of the Early Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystem. In the past 20 years, together with his colleagues, he has discovered and published over 30 new species of birds and dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous of Northeast China, making it the most important area for the study of early avian evolution and having greatly improved our understanding of the morphological differentiation and ecological and evolutional radiation of early birds. To date, he has authored and coauthored over 100 scientific papers including 18 in Nature and Science, and 2 in PNAS. He and his colleagues proposed in their 2003 Nature review article the idea of the Jehol Biota area as a cradle and diversification center for many biological groups. He has received a number of national awards including two National Natural Science Awards from the Chinese government (2000, 2007), and one for popular science publication by the Chinese government (2003). He and his research team also earned several honors from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. Abstract Significant progress has been made in the discovery of fossil evidence of missing links since Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species. Among the most remarkable recently found in China are the earliest vertebrates from the Early Cambrian, the oldest and most primitive turtle from the Middle Triassic, four-winged dinosaurs that are among the closest relatives to birds from the Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, and some of the most basal birds from the Early Cretaceous. These fossils represent some of the major steps in vertebrate evolution and show some key anatomical transitions. Despite the general impression of the incompleteness of fossil records, our knowledge of biological evolutionary history has been greatly enriched. Thanks to the significant progress in studies of paleontology, geochronology, and the molecular timescale, our understanding of the evolution of life on earth is now probably much better than anyone …