A sacred place to restore the context of human origin
——Chengjiang Fossil Land Natural History Museum
Chengjiang, a name that is famous all over the world for fossils. On one side is the plateau lake "Liu Li Wan Qing", the wind and objects into the painting; on the other hand, the mountains are stacked with greenery, reckless and green, and the middle of Yunnan.
In the midst of the landscape, the eternal proposition of who I am, where I have come from, and where I am going, interrogates everyone.
And the Chengjiang Fossil Land Nature Museum between the mountains and rivers can resonate with people at the same frequency: all vertebrates, including our ancient ancestors, originated here, branched and scattered, forming a rich biodiversity; more puzzles to be solved, prompting people to pay attention to the future road and protect the human homeland.
The Cambrian explosion has a lot to do with you and me
On the first floor of the Chengjiang Fossil Land Natural Museum, a fossil discovery scene was restored: on July 1, 1984, Hou Xianguang from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology found a long-tailed Narrow fossil on the western slope of Maotian Mountain. A hammer went down and knocked on a door that opened into the early Cambrian life. The Chengjiang paleontology also became one of the most astonishing scientific discoveries of the 20th century.
The Cambrian Period, between 541 million and 485 million years ago, was a watershed in the evolution of life on Earth. From this time on, a wide variety and a large number of creatures began to appear on the earth. "The Chengjiang fauna is mainly composed of fossils of multiple molluscs, but it has been rarely preserved. And its age is 10 million years earlier than the Burgess shale fauna in Canada, highlighting the rapidity of the Cambrian explosion. Zhao Fangchen, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduced to the reporter of Science and Technology Daily.
Like Researcher Zhao Fangchen, Researcher Cong Peiyun, Vice President of the Institute of Paleontology of Yunnan University, was also deeply involved in the construction of the museum. When asked by the reporter which collection would be recommended to the audience first, he said without hesitation: "Of course, it is Kunming fish." ”
The earliest vertebrates found in the world are the Kunming fish in the Chengjiang biota. The infrastructure of the human body, such as the mind, spine and heart, has emerged in the Kunming fish, initiating the first step in the long evolutionary journey towards the future of intelligent humanity.
More than that, in addition to vertebrates, almost every branch of other living animals on the evolutionary tree of life can find its ancestors in 20 phyla and more than 280 species of the Chengjiang biota.
The ancestors of more than 200 living animals have been "resurrected"
Stepping into the hall on the first floor of the Chengjiang Fossil Land Natural History Museum, the first thing to "calm" the audience is a huge fossil wall. It is both an exhibit and a real stratum of buried Chengjiang fossils, frozen by a disaster more than 500 million years ago.
In the multimedia "undersea tunnel" composed of 90 OLED flexible organic screens, more than 200 species in the Cambrian period were "resurrected", benthic sponges, sea anemones, Kunming fish and jellyfish in the middle... It must be eye-catching, the top predator at that time, the strange shrimp with a length of more than two meters skimmed overhead.
"This flexible screen is only as thick as paper, spanning 6.5 meters, and it takes only 0.1 seconds for 90 screens to refresh at a time, which is also the first time in the world to restore the Cambrian ecosystem with high-definition digital technology." Chen Taimin, director of the Chengjiang Fossil Land Natural Museum, told reporters that many fossils are actually very small, like the "star" Kunming fish is only as large as a fingernail cover, which is not conducive to exhibitions and science popularization.
"Multimedia applications are an important attempt to make small static fossils into impactful and vivid 'animals.'" Chen Taimin said that cutting-edge interactive technologies such as VR, 5D, and human perception are combined with audio- and video, fossils, and only by attracting themselves can they attract the audience.
"In the exhibition of the Museum of Nature, such a high proportion of multimedia is displayed on fossil exhibits, which is the first time in the world!" Cong Peiyun introduced. During the establishment of the museum, a large number of paleontologists participated in the public exhibition to display the planning suggestions and scientific guidance of the exhibition, transforming the paleontological knowledge and the latest achievements into easy-to-understand information and expressing it to the public.
An ideal place to popularize and disseminate knowledge of the evolution of life
From 1984 to 1997, the theme word of the Chengjiang fossil group was "scientific research"; from 1997 to 2012, it was "protection"; and then it was research and utilization.
"The golden signs of the World Natural Heritage and the 'high cold' Cambrian fossils alone cannot bring the value of popular science and its derivatives." Since the opening of the museum in 2014, it is not limited to fossils, and the builders have deliberately and comprehensively interpreted the story of life on earth such as the explosion of life, the great evolution, and biodiversity, and spread out a big article.
During this period, Chen Taimin and a group of others overcame unprecedented difficulties, broke through the barriers to innovate, collected more than 60,000 rare collections from various geological periods across the country and around the world, and accepted more than 200 precious specimens of living animals donated by foreign friends Mr. Kenneth Belling, making the museum an ideal place to base itself on the unique value of Chengjiang fossil land and popularize and disseminate scientific knowledge of life evolution and materialistic historical concept to the world.
In the next step, the museum will make full use of the advantages of exhibition facilities, fossil sites, ecological resources, astronomical observations and other advantageous conditions to build a research and experimental base in an all-round way. "Understanding the origin of life, establishing man's position in biodiversity, and paying attention to the earth and the destiny of mankind, our cause of building a community with a shared future for mankind has great promise." Chen Taimin said.
Source: Science and Technology Daily