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60th Anniversary Celebration
Nanjing Institute of Geology
and Palaeontology
Preserving Tradition While Exploring New Frontiers
The Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s leading
centers for invertebrate palaeontology and palaeobotany, observes its 60th anniversary this year. The institute has
much to celebrate in its rich history of groundbreaking discoveries and academic distinctions. Its strengths include
a large faculty with diverse expertise, close ties with colleagues around the world, information and fossil resources
built up by generations of researchers, and China’s rich natural endowment of fossil records.
N
anjing, located less than two hours from Shanghai by highspeed train, has a long and storied history. It has periodically
served as China’s capital, most recently from 1927–1949
under the Republic of China government. The modern city
still holds many reminders of its past, including stretches of
ancient city wall and an ancient Buddhist temple, which sits adjacent to
the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of
Sciences (NIGPAS).
NIGPAS’s own history began in 1928, when one of its predecessors,
the Ching-Ming-Ssu campus of the Academia Sinica, was founded in
Nanjing. Later on, China’s National Geology Survey was also moved to
Nanjing. In 1951, the palaeontology departments from these two institutes were combined and reborn as the Institute of Palaeontology, a laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. (NIGPAS received its current
name in the 1970s.) While the institute’s main purpose was initially practical—to help the new government locate energy resources—important
basic research has also been carried out from the beginning. “The pioneering generations of scientists contributed tremendously and were remarkably influential to the provincial geological surveys throughout China
and to explorations of oil, gas, coal, and sedimentary mineral resources,”
notes Qun Yang, director of NIGPAS. Among their contributions, the early
researchers compiled charts of the region’s geological strata, and atlases
showing the locations of different fossil types.
Even during China’s tumultuous Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and
'70s, when universities shut down and academics were sometimes sent
to work in the fields, research at NIGPAS continued, notes Yang. In fact,
he says, at that time “a mega-project on palaeontological and stratigraphic investigation near the Mt. Qomolangma region in southern Tibet was
organized together with other natural scientists in the Chinese Academy
of Sciences, laying down the foundation for further geological research in
Tibet.” (Stratigraphy is the study of rock layers.)
Although China was relatively isolated during NIGPAS’s early years,
researchers there were still able to collaborate with scientists from other
socialist countries. Since China’s opening in the late 1970s, the institute’s
scientists have forged strong links with colleagues around the world, thus
ensuring that their research is up to international standards. Hundreds
of scholars from abroad now visit NIGPAS each year, and the institute
in turn sends many students and faculty abroad for study, meetings, and
to seek collaborations (see Education on next page). The institute also
frequently hosts its own international conferences. NIGPAS’s faculty
have taken on the roles of chairman, vice-chairman, and voting member
in the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the International
Palaeontological Association.
The institute now has 160 faculty and staff members, including experts
for nearly every type of invertebrate animal and plant fossil. Its researchers have published more than 8,000 research papers in the past 60
years, characterizing in excess of 1,500 new genera and 12,000 new
species. Thirteen NIGPAS scientists have been elected to the prestigious
0000Recruitment_Nanjing6.indd 2
Chinese Academy of Sciences, including three current faculty members.
In addition to its stellar faculty, the institute boasts the largest professional library for palaeontology and stratigraphy in Asia, with journal collections dating back to the 1770s; a collection of 160,000 type specimens
(fossils that define a species or subspecies); and a research station in
southwest China’s Yunnan Province. As home to China’s only State Key
Laboratory for palaeontology and stratigraphy (see sidebar on the next
page), the institute has an array of modern research instruments.
WIDE-RANGING RESEARCH EXPERTISE
The breadth of palaeontological and stratigraphical research carried out
at NIGPAS is unparalleled; its strengths include studies of the early evolution of life, palaeobotany, ecosystem reconstruction, the transition from
sea-based to land-based life forms, mass extinctions, and the co-evolution of life and environment. “We have a large group of specialists covering nearly all the geological history of life on earth, and covering nearly
all the organism groups, so this is a big treasure,” Yang says. NIGPAS’s
structure and range of expertise give it the unique capability to assemble diverse research groups to work on the same site at the same time
and combine their data into a comprehensive study. Some examples of
NIGPAS’s research accomplishments include:
NIGPAS scientists have been instrumental in building evidence
for the theory of the Cambrian explosion, the period of explosive
evolutionary radiation during which most modern phyla arose. Recently, NIGPAS research has suggested that the pressures of predation might have fueled the explosion by driving the evolution of
protective skeletons.
• Researchers at NIGPAS found and described a cache of Ediacaran
Period embryos, some of the earliest animal fossils ever studied.
• This year, a team led by NIGPAS researchers reported their discovery
of eukaryotes from the early Ediacaran period, demonstrating that
complex organisms evolved sooner than was previously thought
possible.
• Stratigraphy researchers at NIGPAS painstakingly study strata to
define the precise boundaries between geologic eras to help construct the time scale that is the basis of geology and palaeontology.
One major goal is to establish additional Global Boundary Stratotype Sections and Points (GSSPs), internationally recognized reference sites for boundaries. Of the 67 GSSPs so far approved by the
International Committee on Stratigraphy, seven were established by
researchers at NIGPAS.
• The institute’s palaeobotanists carry out both systematic research
and multidisciplinary reconstructions of the original ecological communities at palaeontological sites. Their key findings include the
complete reconstruction of a Mesozoic ancestor of modern ginkgo
trees. The plant was a missing link between Jurassic-era flora and
modern ginkgoes, and its discovery helped clarify the evolutionary
transition between bifurcated and fused leaves.
•
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EDUCATION AND PUBLIC OUTREACH
In the late 1970s, NIGPAS was among the first institutions in mainland China to be accredited to
offer graduate degrees in palaeontology, stratigraphy, and geobiology. Today, the institute’s graduate
students receive broad education in these areas as well as a strong grounding in fieldwork techniques.
Postdocs and visiting researchers also come to the institute for training, as do Nanjing University
undergraduates. In recent years, NIGPAS has launched an array of public education initiatives: a
website, Fossil Web (www.uua.cn/english); a magazine, Life and Evolution; the Nanjing Museum
of Palaeontology; and public lectures. In 2009, Fossil Web won the World Summit Award in the
e-Science category.
Museum of Palaeontology
“Promote active innovation while preserving
our traditional merits. Always strive for the
heights of palaeontology and stratigraphy.”
— Chunli Bai, president of CAS, May 2011,
Celebrating NIGPAS's 60th Anniversary
Qun Yang
Xiangdong Wang Huaicheng Zhu
Director
NIGPAS
Chairman
Chairman
Academic Committee Degree Committee
Type Specimen Repository
Shuzhong Shen
Head
State Key
Laboratory
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
“The disciplinary breadth of the teams in the institute is its core strength,
and maintaining that advantage while cultivating new frontiers for our science is considered the top priority for the institute,” says Director Yang.
“We are able to undertake not only large-scale investigations of biological evolution and the Earth’s evolution using fossils, geochemistry, and
sedimentology, but also to explore a number of new frontiers. We try
to use the methods of geochemistry and molecular biology to combine
studies of the ‘tree of life’ and the fossil record.” By doing this, researchers can figure out where extinct organisms belong on the tree of life
and when branching occurred from a species giving rise to two or more
descendents.
In exploring those new frontiers, scientists at NIGPAS have an advantage over their colleagues in most other countries: China’s impressive
geological diversity. Several tectonic plates comprise the country’s land,
and as a result, it has a rich variety of palaeontological fauna. At one
Jun Wang
Head
Palaeobotany &
Palynology
Xunlai Yuan
Head
Micropalaeontology
Renbin Zhan
Head
Invertebrate
Palaeontology
site, near the Yangtze, NIGPAS researchers found strata that constituted “preserved complete records, maybe the best in existence, from
the Neoproterozoic through the Palaeozoic and part of the Mesozoic
era, covering more than 400 million years of continuous, uninterrupted
records of marine sediments,” Yang says. China’s recent construction boom has also helped palaeontologists by exposing potential new
study sites.
In the near future, Yang says, NIGPAS will establish a new unit for
applied palaeontology, which will focus on resource exploration. At the
same time, he says, the institute will continue its strong tradition of basic
research by emphasizing the study of Precambrian and Phaenerozoic
evolutionary events, establishing more GSSPs, upgrading its fossil collections and curation practices to become the region’s center for invertebrate and plant fossil collections, increasing the number of researchers
by at least 20%, and stepping up recruitment of international graduate
students and postdocs.
STATE
ST
KEY LABORATORY OF PALAEOBIOLOGY AND STRATIGRAPHY
Th Chinese Academy of Sciences funded a new
The
Laboratory
of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy
La
(LPS)
at NIGPAS in 1989. In 2001, LPS was made
(L
a State Key Laboratory by the Ministry of Science
and
a Technology of China, meaning that it receives
stable research funding from the ministry, and
is tasked with carrying out top-quality research
while providing access to state-of-the-art instruments for scientists
visiting from other institutions worldwide.
LPS boasts a “dream team” of 34 accomplished scientists who
represent a broad range of specialties, says Shuzhong Shen, head
of LPS. During LPS’s two-decade history they have published more
than 1000 research papers, including 13 in Science, and have won
numerous national prizes.
Fossil of Sinosauropteryx
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MAIN RESEARCH AREAS AT NIGPAS
Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy
of Sciences (NIGPAS), maintains active research programs in the
following areas:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The Origin and Evolution of Early Life on Earth
Evolutionary Palaeontology
Chronostratigraphy
Systematic Palaeontology
Palaeoecology, Palaeogeography, and Palaeoclimatology
Molecular Palaeobiology
Geobiology
Co-evolution of Life and Environment
Applied Palaeontology and Stratigraphy
Our research staff strives to organize joint research projects and other
academic activities with scientists from around the world. International
collaborations are strongly promoted and encouraged in these scientific
areas as well as related disciplines in research, education, infrastructural
building, and public outreach.
M.S., PH.D., AND POSTDOCTORAL PROGRAMS
NIGPAS offers M.S. and Ph.D. degree-granting programs and a postdoctoral program in palaeontology, stratigraphy, and geobiology. Graduate
students who are interested in applying are required to take specialized
tests designed by the institute in addition to national examinations.
The postdoctoral program is open to young scientists worldwide
who are interested in collaborating with NIGPAS’s research staff
and furthering their professional training in one of the institute’s main
research areas. Interested applicants may contact individual research
staff members or our International Office for more information (see
contact information below).
FELLOWSHIPS FOR VISITING SCIENTISTS
Two types of fellowships, which are primarily funded by the Chinese
Academy of Sciences (CAS), are available for overseas scientists
to conduct research at NIGPAS: visiting professorships for senior
international scientists and fellowships for young international
scientists. In addition, there are visiting programs specifically for
young scholars who are based in Taiwan or in developing countries.
For more information contact our International Office or visit the CAS
website: english.bic.cas.cn/AF/Fe.
CONTACT INFORMATION
International Office
Nanjing Institute of Geology
and Palaeontology, CAS
No. 39 East Beijing Road, Nanjing 210008, China
www.nigpas.cas.cn or english.nigpas.cas.cn
Phone: +86 25 83282105
Fax: +86 25 83357026
E-mail: [email protected]
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