Many people may have wondered: Where do humans come from? Did ancient apes evolve into humans? Did dinosaurs really go extinct? How heavy were the largest dinosaurs? Were there really sea monsters in the past? Were pterosaurs flying dinosaurs? Did birds evolve from dinosaurs? Was the climate really very cold during the time of the mammoths? What other animals and plants lived on ancient Earth? How did they gradually evolve into the creatures we see today? Paleontology can answer these questions.
In the Shanhai Jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) of the Warring States and Western Han Dynasties in China, there were records of "dragon bones". As early as the 6th century BC, ancient Greek scholars had already recognized that fossils were formed by ancient organisms. Yan Zhenqing of the Tang Dynasty and Shen Kuo of the Northern Song Dynasty also accurately pointed out that fossils were the remains of ancient animals and plants. During the Renaissance in Europe, Leonardo da Vinci proposed that fossils could be used to infer crustal movements and sea-land changes. By the late 18th century, paleontology gradually became a branch of modern science and developed in Europe, and was soon widely applied in geology, biology, and other fields.
The main object of paleontological research is fossils. French scientist Georges Cuvier is regarded as the founder of paleontology, which is related to his extensive work on comparative anatomy of animals. Cuvier's work also laid the foundation for the later development of the theory of biological evolution. The application of paleontological knowledge to stratigraphy and geology could not have been achieved without the outstanding contributions of British geologist James Smith. In 1796, he proposed the law of fossil succession: the older the strata, the simpler the organisms they contain, and vice versa; different strata have different fossil combinations. He widely applied this finding to geological mapping, and paleontology thus became a fundamental science for stratigraphy and even the entire field of geology. It can be said that the discovery and research of geological minerals such as coal and oil could not have been achieved without the outstanding contributions of paleontologists.
As an interdisciplinary field of biology and geology, the research results of paleontology undoubtedly provided strong evidence for Darwin's theory of evolution. When Darwin was writing his immortal masterpiece On the Origin of Species, the number and types of fossils he knew were not very abundant, but he still gained many important inspirations and evidence to support his theory from them. Today, paleontology has accumulated rich results. Researchers have discovered many common ancestors of living creatures and countless fossils linking different biological groups, thus further confirming Darwin's theory. The Jurassic dinosaur groups discovered by Chinese scientists in Xinjiang have greatly enriched people's understanding of Mesozoic creatures. American famous biologist Jerry Coyne once wrote: "When Darwin was writing On the Origin of Species, embryological evidence was used as the most powerful evidence. If it were today, he might have given this honor to fossils. For many people, fossil evidence is more convincing psychologically than molecular genetic data... If we did not have fossils, our understanding of biological evolution would only be a general outline. With the 'eyes' of fossils, we can look into the depths of history." Perhaps it can be said that the great theory of evolution of Darwin only stood firm for more than 100 years because it was built on "solid rock". If we compare the history of the evolution of Earth's creatures to a towering tree that has grown from ancient times to the present, then all living animals and plants are just the latest leaves of this tree, while fossils represent its trunk, branches, and fallen leaves. Therefore, studying the origin and evolutionary history of various living creatures naturally relies on fossils.
About a century and a half ago, Western scholars began to come to China to examine and collect fossils. However, Chinese scholars have been engaged in paleontological research for less than 100 years.Despite this, paleontology is still one of the natural sciences that was developed relatively early in modern China. The pioneers of Chinese paleontology once created countless glories, laid the foundation for Chinese paleontological research, and made unique contributions to China's geological cause. From the world-shocking discovery of the skull of the Peking Man in Zhoukoudian in 1929 to the Jurassic Zigong dinosaur fauna, the Cambrian Chengjiang biota, and the Cretaceous Rehe biota, one world-class fossil treasure trove after another has been unveiled in China. A series of stratigraphic "golden nails" hailed as the "Olympic gold medals" in the scientific community have been established in China, and Chinese paleontologists have made outstanding contributions to compiling the chronology of Earth's evolution.
In 2001, the American journal Science published a special report titled "Exquisite Chinese Fossils Add New Chapters to the Book of Life's History", highlighting the dazzling discoveries made by Chinese paleontologists in recent years. In the same year, the British journal Nature published a special issue titled "Soaring Dragon" introducing the achievements of Chinese paleontological research: Chinese paleontologists discovered the first fish on Earth from ancient Cambrian strata, unveiling the mystery of the Cambrian explosion; they not only found the world's earliest feathered dinosaur, but also provided the best fossil evidence for the origin of birds from dinosaur ancestors; they also discovered the world's oldest turtles, the earliest mammals capable of gliding and swimming, the earliest woolly rhinoceroses, the earliest tree roots, and the earliest flowers... A senior biology editor of the British journal Nature commented in a 2009 article introducing the Chinese paleontological community: "Openness has produced a new generation of Chinese researchers. In the early 21st century, China not only had the best paleontologists, but also the best fossils."
Paleontology is the epitaph of biological evolution. The evolution of life is complex and intricate, like a multivolume encyclopedia. The story of Earth's life is etched into the fossils. Although this historical book has been "torn and crumpled" by nature and "scattered everywhere", paleontologists tirelessly search for clues to the evolution of life in rocks and persistently piece together scattered "paragraphs" and "words" from different "chapters", reconstructing the story of Earth's biological evolution over billions of years for us.