Reporter experiences observing fossils under the microscope (Photo by Wang Kaiyao)
The International Online Shaanxi Channel reported (Wang Kaiyao): "This fossil is really magical! Xiao Liu looked at the fossil in Professor Liu Jianni's hand at Northwest University and said. On May 4th, the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee Science and Technology Working Committee and the Shaanxi Provincial Science and Technology Department organized the mainstream media reporters in the province to interview the major basic research results and enter Northwest University. After several visits, the development of Shaanxi's scientific and technological achievements is commendable.
Liu Jianni's fossil is the same in 2011 that researchers at Northwest University in China and its international collaborators published a bizarre animal fossil called a "walking cactus" in the February 24 issue of nature magazine that year, thus discovering a key link in the evolution of arthropods.
This research result is still of great significance to this day and is one of the remarkable achievements of Shaanxi's basic research achievements. Shaanxi's scientific research achievements do not stop here, and the early life evolution team and the traditional Chinese medicine research and development team of Northwest University, a century-old school, have all helped Shaanxi's basic research results to innovate and develop continuously in the process of arduous research.
"Dead" fossils hide the secret of "living" Arthropod origins are becoming clearer
Professor Liu Jianni displays the fossil of "walking cactus" (Photo by Wang Kaiyao)
Leaf-legged animals are a type of animal with soft leaf-like feet (appendages). This taxon flourished in the Cambrian period of 540 million years and is now completely extinct. Although the leafpods are completely extinct, they are inseparable from the origins of the largest dominant taxon on Earth (spiders, cockroaches, butterflies, mosquitoes, etc.).
In academia, the origin and diversity of arthropods have long been the focus of attention and exploration, and if you want to reveal the mystery and evolution of arthropods, you need extinct "leafpods" to provide direct fossil evidence.
Fossils are special texts left for us by ancient life that once lived on the earth, and the study of fossils has opened a window for human beings to understand biological evolution.
In 2005, Liu Jianni discovered a peculiar creature in the Cambrian fossil bank located in Chengjiang, Yunnan, China, called the "cactus Dian worm". It comes from the Cambrian ocean 540 million years ago, with long spines and a body that is basically as thick as its legs, which was later called a "walking cactus" creature because of its cactus-like appearance.
"The first reaction to this fossil was to find it strange, and I had never seen a creature with a body almost as thick as its legs." Liu Jianni said. Based on extensive reading, in 2009 Liu Jianni tentatively deduced that this creature was most likely an ancestor of arthropods that had been lost in the dust of ancient history.
Later, Liu Jianni and Dr. Michael Steiner of the Free University of Berlin and Jason A Dunlop researcher at the Natural Science Museum in Berlin carefully observed and studied the fossils, and finally found that the "cactus Dianworm" had developed segmented appendages, but still retained a soft demodex-shaped torso, which is conclusive fossil evidence that the segmentation of arthropod appendages is significantly earlier than the segmentation of the trunk. This discovery is the first to initially solve the scientific problem of the origin and early evolution of arthropod phylum, which has long plagued the academic community.
Tracing the origins of animals, discovering distant ancestors of miniature humans
Wrinkled sacs in the Kuanchuanpu biota of southern Shaanxi. (Courtesy of Han Jian)
Han Jian, a researcher at Northwest University, and others in the study of miniature animal fossils in the Kuanchuanpu biota in southern Shaanxi Province, found the oldest primitive hindquarter, the coronal wrinkled cyst. This miniature animal, which is only 1 mm in adult size, is thought to represent the earliest miniature human ancestor of the Phanerozoic.
Humans are hindquarters. It is understood that only one opening appears in the early stages of animal embryonic development, called the "embryo hole". If the embryonic foramen develops into an opening of the animal's adult mouth and unity, the animal belongs to the basic animal; if the embryonic hole develops into an animal adult's independent mouth, and the opposite end forms an anus, the animal with this developmental mode is called the proto-mouth animal.
If, as opposed to the original mouth animal, its embryonic foramen develops into the anus of the adult animal, and the new opening at the other end develops into the animal's mouth, it is called a posterior mouth animal. For example, starfish, sea cucumbers, sea lilies, Wenchang fish, reptiles, birds, humans, etc. are all post-mouthed animals.
The oldest primitive post-mouth animal, the coronal wrinkled cyst, pushed the academic understanding of the early ancestors of humans from 520 million years ago to 535 million years ago (very close to the beginning of the Phanerozoic), and its volume was also pushed from "centimeter- to "millimeter-level". 520 million years ago, the 'world's first fish, kunming fish' in the Chengjiang fauna, represented the 'macro-type' human ancestors who had just created brains and primitive vertebrae, while the 535 million-year-old wrinkled sacs should be closely related to the miniature human distant ancestors who created the rudimentary gills.
Han Jian's team's findings suggest that this millimeter-sized miniature animal is likely to be a root of the long-awaited sublime of the post-mouth animal sublime, thus representing the closest relatives of the earliest millimeter-level human distant ancestors of the Ezoogene (540 million years ago).
The scene of the meeting (Photo by Wang Kaiyao)
In the activity organized by the Science and Technology Working Committee of the Shaanxi Provincial Party Committee and the Shaanxi Provincial Science and Technology Department to interview the major basic research results, there are many excellent scientific research achievements displayed, including the "Bao hulu" innovative drug by Zheng Xiaohui, a professor at Northwest University, and its phased achievement "Jun-Make Medicine" Active Ingredient Group Identification Technology Research, which won the first prize of the 2014 Shaanxi Provincial Science and Technology Award. At the beginning of 2015, the team's paper on innovative drug research and development ideas and methods was published in the internationally renowned scientific journal Science "The Art and Science of Traditional Medicine". The study is easy to target the therapeutic effect of the main disease, and the composition is simple and easy to study and operate, opening a new door for innovative drug research based on Chinese herbal medicines.
It is understood that this centralized interview activity is to further publicize the major achievements made by Shaanxi Province in the field of basic research, encourage the majority of scientific researchers to devote themselves to basic research, promote the development of scientific and technological innovation, and help Shaanxi's scientific and technological strength catch up and surpass.