Qingjiang Biota
I just wanted to talk briefly about the Qingjiang Biota and its significance to biological research.
I personally think biology is a more global subject than many people might think. It brings researchers to a variety of different places to study living or extinct animals. I've seen this with friends and researchers alike: Diego Blanco's taken his interests in biology to Peru and the postdoctoral researcher I've worked with for research on developmental biology has studied hemichordates, or a type of worm, loosely speaking, in other parts of the United States (since housing on the California coast has destroyed environments that would have suited hemichordates well). In my research at the Bronner Lab, researchers all over the world from South Africa to Japan came to work with lamprey (a rare model for studying evolution).
I was able to talk with Tetsuto Miyashita, a researcher studying the evolution of the jawed vertebrates, about paleontology and I got to thinking how global of a study paleontology is. Paleontology took Tet to the Qingjiang Biota in China, a newly discovered fossil locality. I've looked into the Qingjiang Biota and found it has great significance evolutionarily. The Qingjiang Biota has exceptional preservation of Cambrian fossils. Cambrian fossils are about 550 million years old and mark the first appearance of more complex organisms, including arthropods (which are represented by crabs, shrimp, and other animals we are familiar with) and the beginnings of vertebrate life. These fossils can be used to study how living animals today have evolved and from a more abstract perspective, to understand what the process of evolution can create. What's also notable about the Qingjiang biota is that it features a different sample of fossil types as compared to other sites of exceptional preservation (Lagerstatten) such as the world-famous Burgess Shale or Chengjiang. There are a lot of cnidarians represented in the Qingjiang biota (jellyfish) and ctenophores (comb jellies), which are found in other localities but not to the degree found in the Qingjiang. The Qingjiang has proved a fruitful source for discovering previously unknown fossils. What I think is particularly exciting is that the Qingjiang was only discovered this year. I think we can take this as a sign that the global study of evolution is still alive and well.
I personally think biology is a more global subject than many people might think. It brings researchers to a variety of different places to study living or extinct animals. I've seen this with friends and researchers alike: Diego Blanco's taken his interests in biology to Peru and the postdoctoral researcher I've worked with for research on developmental biology has studied hemichordates, or a type of worm, loosely speaking, in other parts of the United States (since housing on the California coast has destroyed environments that would have suited hemichordates well). In my research at the Bronner Lab, researchers all over the world from South Africa to Japan came to work with lamprey (a rare model for studying evolution).
I was able to talk with Tetsuto Miyashita, a researcher studying the evolution of the jawed vertebrates, about paleontology and I got to thinking how global of a study paleontology is. Paleontology took Tet to the Qingjiang Biota in China, a newly discovered fossil locality. I've looked into the Qingjiang Biota and found it has great significance evolutionarily. The Qingjiang Biota has exceptional preservation of Cambrian fossils. Cambrian fossils are about 550 million years old and mark the first appearance of more complex organisms, including arthropods (which are represented by crabs, shrimp, and other animals we are familiar with) and the beginnings of vertebrate life. These fossils can be used to study how living animals today have evolved and from a more abstract perspective, to understand what the process of evolution can create. What's also notable about the Qingjiang biota is that it features a different sample of fossil types as compared to other sites of exceptional preservation (Lagerstatten) such as the world-famous Burgess Shale or Chengjiang. There are a lot of cnidarians represented in the Qingjiang biota (jellyfish) and ctenophores (comb jellies), which are found in other localities but not to the degree found in the Qingjiang. The Qingjiang has proved a fruitful source for discovering previously unknown fossils. What I think is particularly exciting is that the Qingjiang was only discovered this year. I think we can take this as a sign that the global study of evolution is still alive and well.
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