Ji Qiang, born in 1951, is a paleontologist who was the director of the Geological Museum of China, the chief scientist of the Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, and is now a tenured distinguished professor of Hebei University of Geosciences. Since 1995, many rare fossils of paleontology have been discovered, which has promoted the research of China's Rehe biota, the origin of birds, the origin of eupropods and the origin of angiosperms into the international advanced list. It is known as the "father of the dragon bird" and "the second generation of Chinese dragon kings" (the first generation of "dragon kings" is Yang Zhongjian, a geologist and paleontologist).
In the eyes of his peers in The Chinese paleontological community, Ji Qiang, 71, has always been a "troublemaker."
From the micro-shaped stone tooth-shaped spines, to the origin of dinosaurs, ancient birds, ancient mammals, primitive plant origins, and then to the study of paleoanthropology that is now underway, he can almost always make some breakthrough discoveries that arouse high attention from the academic community and the media.
In the fiercely competitive Chinese paleontological community, Ji Qiang is a spoiler who makes his peers who are accustomed to guarding each acre and three fields/hills feel headaches, but they have to be convinced—his sensitivity to major evolutionary issues, his ability to track key fossils, and his ability to organize and implement research topics make many of his peers feel that they are "inferior".
"I just want to solve some of the hard problems in science." The internationally renowned paleontologist laughed heavily, a little bit of mischievous triumph, "And then I solved the problem, you can't always complain that I'm nosy, right?" ”
When you are a "rule" breaker, you naturally have to pay a price. Character determines destiny. Ji Qiang said that he had already thought it through, "no desire is just", as long as there is still a little thought about something, he will worry about offending people, and if he wants to force himself to say something against his heart, he will not be able to shake off his hands and feet to go to the office. "I especially like the Sichuan one who is willing to drink, and there is a house to get." It is enough to leave a few valuable articles in the world in this life. ”
Ecological restoration map of "Chinese Dragon Bird"
In 2016, after retiring from the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, he was appointed as a tenured professor by Hebei University of Geosciences. For several years, he organized and promoted scientific research projects. In June 2021, he published a paper online globally on the "Dragon Man" project, which he collaborated with Professor Ni Xijun's team, which immediately triggered a shock in the international academic and journalistic circles.
Different from the images of those "scientists" and "nerds" scholars who do not understand the world and do not eat fireworks in the mainstream reportage works in the early years, Ji Qiang has a distinct personality, is very grounded, has a sense of arrogance that can call brothers and brothers with the three religions and nine streams, and a little bit of cunning that is elusive.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > special "buried" in historical faults</h1>
Grounded gas, jianghu arrogance and tenacious vitality come from Ji Qiang's early life experience at the bottom of society.
Unlike those academic juniors who have been circling between schools, universities and research institutions all their lives, Ji Qiang, who belongs to the "post-50s" generation, grew up in a special historical fault. In that fault, becoming a natural scientist is a rare special kind of "burial."
Ji Qiang was born in 1951 in Rudong County, Nantong, Jiangsu Province, in a small town facing the Yellow Sea. When the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, he had just graduated from junior high school and was sent to the poorest coastal countryside in the region to join the team. He belonged to the small town Zhiqing who "did not rely on both ends", and neither enjoyed the treatment given by the state to the urban Zhiqing at that time, nor did he have the family protection received by the young people who returned to their hometowns, and his life was particularly difficult.
In the first year of decentralization, after a whole year of agricultural work, he actually owed the People's Commune 68 yuan, "because it is said that the work you earned is not enough to pay for the food in the team." In order to survive, he did almost everything, repaired tractors, carried bricks in kiln factories, worked as a substitute teacher in the village, and even sang revolutionary model plays on stage. "In the cold of March 9, he went down to the beach barefoot and took a fork to fish, and the fish he caught were sold for seven or eight yuan, and he had two months of oil and salt money.
Perhaps it is the "survivor bias", Ji Qiang always believes that this low-level life experience has created him - to sharpen a wild child who was originally mischievous and mischievous into a very self-motivated person, "when he has the opportunity to study later, he will cherish and work hard." Also because he had suffered a lot, he later encountered some "small tribulations and small grievances" in scientific research, and he didn't think it was a big deal.
In 1973, at the age of 22, Ji Qiang was given the opportunity to be recommended by the commune brigade to apply for the examination of workers, peasants, and soldiers.
He filled in two volunteers at that time, the first was Zhenjiang Agricultural Technology College, and the second was Wuxi Light Industry College. His idea is very simple, he has repaired tractors in the countryside, there should be no problem in engaging in machinery, and when he graduates in the future, he can have an iron rice bowl at the county agricultural machinery company to share the responsibility for the family.
That year, as the number one key institution in the province, Nanjing University had the right to choose the first batch of students, and they transferred Ji Qiang's candidate files in advance.
Receiving the acceptance letter of the paleontology major of Nanjing University, Ji Qiang was both surprised and happy, and he was confused, and he took the admission letter and ran to consult the most cultured cultural curator in the county. "He watched for half a day and said he knew the Archaeology Department, but he had never heard of what this paleontology major was for."
Before going to college in the provincial city, Ji Qiang never wore underwear, got up in the morning and put on his worn-out coat and pants and went out to work. His mother spent a few days making a few underwear for him and instructed, "You are now a college student, and you must look like a college student." ”
Nanjing University, far from the center of the political movement, has unexpectedly become a "pure land." At that time, normal teaching had been interrupted for several years, and the teachers of NTU saw these newly enrolled students, riveted their strength, and tried their best to cultivate them well, "Really treat us as treasures." Every time we went to the field assignment, the teachers ate and lived with us all together, completely mixed together. ”
Most of these older students who were only at the level of beginner Chinese s before the "Cultural Revolution" and who had already suffered a lot in society also cherished the hard-won learning opportunities, "The study style is very correct, and everyone is desperately studying and desperately making up for the foundation." As soon as dinner arrived in the evening, everyone went to the classroom to grab a seat in advance, and then went to the canteen to grab a few bites of food, and then hurried back to the classroom to study. ”
After graduating from NTU in 1976, Ji Qiang was assigned to the Xi'an Coalfield Geological Exploration Institute under the Ministry of Coal Industry. After more than a year of nibbling on the "wire noodles" pressed out of the sorghum corn heterophytes in the Great Northwest, he was admitted to the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (referred to as the "Nangu Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences") in 1978, becoming the first graduate student recruited by the Nangu Institute after the "Cultural Revolution".
Stout primitive ancestral bird orthodontic specimen
When he was in graduate school, his research direction was the tooth-shaped spines of the mud basin-charcoal boundary in the shallow water phase of South China (reporter's note: the skeleton of an extinct class of micro-paleontologists, living in the Cambrian to Triassic, occupies an extremely important position in biological evolution). At that time, the Chronological division of the Devonian-Carboniferous period in the Chinese geological community was based on coral fossils, and this standard was established by Mr. Yu Jianzhang, a chinese geological giant, since the 1920s, commonly known as the "CPTY Four Coral Belts", of which C represents the "Foam Inner Gully Coral Belt". In geological exploration, once such fossils are seen in the formation, this marks the beginning of the Carboniferous Period. By the time Ji Qiang was in graduate school, the standard had been in use in China for decades, and "no one would question it." ”
"To be fair, from the perspective of other disciplines of geology, Mr. Yu Lao's original proposal of this standard is in line with China's objective reality. However, this mud basin-carbonization boundary, or any boundary, should have a globally unified concept of time, not just regional. For example, this foam inner groove coral may not be found abroad, so it cannot become an international standard. ”
After setting the direction of the thesis with his supervisor, Ji Qiang worked hard in the heat, ran to the field to take samples, make a profile, carry the stone back to the station, and then asked the tractor to be pulled to the railway station to check it in, and then did the analysis in the laboratory of the institute himself. "The results were very good, and the resulting tooth-shaped thorn specimens were all Devonian and none of them were Carboniferous."
"Therefore, I came to the conclusion at that time: it is possible that the C belt that Mr. Yu said at that time was the foam inner ditch coral belt, and its era was not earlier than the Carboniferous, but later than the Devonian. Logically, this is a big step forward, because it is directly in line with the international standard. But our director at the time, he himself was engaged in coral fossils. He believes that this set of standards proposed by Mr. Yu lao must not be moved, and the standard is the standard, and you had better change yours. I said: Director, how to change this, if I find a few Carboniferous, I will also change the time in my paper to early Carboniferous, but all I found are late Devonian tooth-shaped thorns, if it is changed, my paper will not be established. ”
At the end of the defense of the master's thesis, the review committee made a conclusion: agreed to Ji Qiang's graduation and agreed to award him a master's degree. After learning of this result, Ji Qiang relaxed his mind and happily went to the headquarters of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing to report. At that time, the girlfriend he was talking about was from Beijing, so he wanted to go to the capital to work, and he also won the opportunity to distribute work.
After arriving in Beijing, he waited left and right, waiting for four months, and did not wait for his graduation certificate and degree certificate. When I inquired, my classmates in the same class as him all got these two certificates. Later, he learned that after the review of the thesis, the party committee of the Nangu Institute held another meeting and decided to allow Ji Qiang to graduate, but did not agree to award him a degree, and wrote written materials and sent them to the Beijing headquarters of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences.
At the threshold of personal destiny, Lady Luck smiled at him again. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping expounded the thesis that "science and technology are productive forces" at the National Science Congress, and Guo Moruo, then president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, sang the praises of "the spring of science.". Ji Qiang eventually got a master's degree. In that era when personal choice opportunities were extremely scarce, Ji Qiang still had a little fear every time he looked back: if there was no "scientific spring", what would he do later? "Maybe in the boiler burning," is more likely to be assigned to a county-level small unit for a lifetime, "it is estimated that it is also mixed with a section level or even a department-level cadre." ”
In 1990, Ji Qiang won the Humboldt Scholarship in the Federal Republic of Germany and went to Europe to do postdoctoral research. In the history of paleontology, Europe is a traditional research center, which has bred and produced brilliant stars such as Darwin and Huxley. During his stay in Germany, Ji Qiang underwent a rebirth-like leap in ideology and concept. Under the guidance of his supervisor and director of the Natural History Museum in Seinkenburg, Wiitzler, he continued his research on stratigraphy and tooth-shaped spines, and in two years he completed five papers on fossil tooth-shaped spines and a research monograph.
Most importantly, under the influence of his mentor, he embraced a whole set of ideas and methods from evolutionary biology.
"Since then, my whole research has changed—no longer just staring at a single paleofossil, but every time I find a particular burial, I think and look for its place in the entire evolutionary spectrum of life." If it had never been discovered before, it would have figured out whether it was a new species or a new genus, or a special accidental mutation. ”
In April 1992, Ji Qiang returned to China and continued to do research work at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. Because of his outstanding achievements and repeated academic honors, he was quickly promoted to researcher. A few years later, he successfully bid for the director of the Geological Museum of China.
Leading such a special research institution facing the public and exhibiting, Ji Qiang began to ponder the academic transformation of the researchers in the museum, and thus brought this "small" professional museum to the ranks of the two major paleontological research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, especially the "Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology" (referred to as the "North Institute of Ancient Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences").
< h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" > "feathered dinosaurs" were found</h1>
On August 12, 1996, a farmer from western Liaoning broke into Ji Qiang's office. He showed off a fossil he had carried with him, hoping that the Geological Museum of China would buy it.
After consultation, the fossil was finally donated to the Geological Museum of China for permanent collection. Correspondingly, the farmer received a state reward of 6,000 yuan.
It is a fairly well-preserved, finely preserved section of fossils: it is about a meter tall, like some kind of small dinosaur, with sharp teeth in its mouth, short forelimbs, long and stout hindlimbs, and a long tail of more than fifty tail vertebrae. When Ji Qiang took a magnifying glass and looked closely, he found something that surprised him--this ancient creature was covered with a short, black, fiber-like thing.
His professional sensitivity was immediately mobilized— although the bank was a micro-paleontology study, he had seen many dinosaur fossils before, "such a short, fibrous structure, which has never been seen in the past in the world." ”
"I thought what could it be? Is it possible that there is hair like mammals? I ruled this out first, because if it were hairs, each hair would have a separate root. And the fibrous structure of this fossil is like a dandelion, a handful of them, which means that many fibrous structures are generated from a central point. This fits the characteristics of feathers, so at the time I was very bold and simply defined it as 'primitive feathers' (protofeathers or profeathers). ”
In 1996, Ji Qiang, as the first author and colleague Ji Shu'an, published an article in China Geology entitled "The Discovery of China's Earliest Bird Fossils and the Origin of Birds". In it, he named the fossil "Chinese Dragon Bird", the official Latin scientific name Sinosauropteryx: "sino" means "Zhonghua"; "saur" means "lizard", commonly used in dinosaur naming; "pteryx" has the meaning of "wings", referring to birds, the same as the second half of archaeopteryx of The German Archaeopteryx.
The name reveals Ji Qiang's intentions for months: he classified the newly discovered transitional species between typical dinosaurs and birds as an early bird, and the fibrous skin derivative it was covered with was a "primitive feather" and considered it older than the world's oldest bird, Archaeopteryx, found in Germany. A few years later, Ji Qiang agreed with the mainstream view of the international academic community and revised his own view, classifying the "Chinese Dragon Bird" as a kind of dinosaur, but retaining its original name.
Fibrous primitive feathers developed in Chinese dragon birds
A few months later, Chen Piji, a researcher at the Institute of Southern Antiquology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, brought a yang profile photo of the same fossil to the 56th annual meeting of the North American Vertebrate Paleontology Society.
How did dinosaurs grow feathers? As soon as the fossils of the "Chinese Dragon Bird" were unveiled, they caused a huge shock in the international paleontological community, which has been debated to the point of white-hotting the origin of birds.
In international academic circles, the origin of birds has been discussed for nearly a century and a half. In 1859, Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Two years later, in Bavaria, Germany, fossils of Archaeopteryx with claws on its wings and long-tailed vertebrae were found in the Late Jurassic formation, about 146 million years old. These two important events have sparked growing interest in the origins of birds in the scientific community and the general public.
In 1868, Huxley, a big supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution, first proposed the hypothesis that birds may have evolved from dinosaurs by comparing the hind legs of Megalosaurus with those of birds. This hypothesis is opposed by most academic "big bulls": they believe that megalodons and birds are bipedal animals, so it is not surprising that the structural characteristics of the hind limbs are similar. More importantly, and more intuitively, how could the delicate "Children of the Sky" have evolved from large, flightless dinosaurs?
In the 1920s, various hypotheses of non-dinosaur origins became the mainstream thinking of the international scientific community, mainly including "crocodile origin theory" and "slotted tooth (animal) origin theory". Until the 1970s, Yale University professor J. H. Osteron revived the hypothesis that birds originated from dinosaurs, and further pointed out that birds evolved from small theropod (carnivorous) dinosaurs. His views are supported by some young scholars, but have been supported by corresponding transitional fossil evidence.
Since March 1997, the "Dream Team", led by Ostrom and organized by the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, has come to China to investigate. At this stop in Beijing, Ji Qiang received them at the Geological Museum of China and showed them a fossil specimen of the "Chinese Dragon Bird".
Regarding the evolutionary status of the "Chinese dragon bird", the international academic community continues to debate about this.
Ji Qiang firmly believed in the evidence and judgment he had, and continued to look for more fossil evidence with a strong momentum.
In March 1997, when the northeast region was freezing cold, Ji Qiang learned a message about the fossils. In the midst of the whiteness of heaven and earth, he drove to The Four Hetun of The Northern Ticket, but pounced, and then rushed to Jinzhou according to the newly obtained clues, but he still did not see the owner of the fossil. He had to find a small hotel near the man's house, knocked on the door every two hours, and kept watch for four days and four nights, and finally saw the precious fossil. It is the "original ancestral bird" published and named by Ji Qiang and his collaborators in Nature in 1997.
The Protarchaeopteryx is the second feathered dinosaur ji qiang has found in the western Liaoning region. Its appearance is close to that of the cunning and ferocious "killer" robber in the American blockbuster Jurassic Park, but it has real feathers, with slender feather shafts and symmetrical feathers, and a tail length of 15 mm. On the evolutionary lineage tree, it is closer to birds than the Chinese dragon bird, but more primitive than the German Archaeopteryx.
Ecological restoration map of Zou's tail feather dragon
In 1998, Ji Qiang and his team found a third feathered dinosaur, the "tail feather bird", whose tail feathers were exactly the same as the concept of modern bird feathers, but its feathers were symmetrical. Scientists mostly believe that asymmetrical feathers have the function of flight, and the symmetrical feathers of the tail feather bird are likely to represent a more primitive stage of feather evolution. The findings and findings were published in the journal Nature that year.
The following year's Spring Festival, Ji Qiang, as a special guest, went to Boston to participate in the "International Symposium on the Origin and Early Origin of Birds: China's Feathered Dinosaurs" held by Yale University and National Geographic. At the Peabody Museum of Natural History, together with Professor Ostrom, he ushered in the highlight of his academic career – the vast majority of the more than 500 scientists present at the meeting accepted the idea that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs and believed that "the discovery of rare fossils such as the Chinese dragon bird in western Liaoning, China is one of the most important scientific discoveries of the late 20th century".
Since this year, the "dinosaur origin theory of birds" has become the mainstream consensus of the international paleontology community. In October 1998, the state approved the establishment of a bird fossil group nature reserve centered on the Sihetun of Beipiao in Chaoyang City, with a radius of 46.3 square kilometers.
Taking the "Chinese Dragon Bird" as the starting point, Ji Qiang and other Chinese paleontologists have successively found more feathered dinosaurs and primitive bird fossils in Liaoning Xiyi County, Beipiao, Lingyuan and other areas, further improving the theory that birds originated from small theropod dinosaurs. Among them, Academician Zhou Zhonghe and researcher Xu Xing from the Institute of Northern Ancient Studies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences put forward new hypotheses and new concepts with certain influence, such as 'arboreal dinosaurs', 'four-winged dinosaurs', and 'four-wing stages'.
China's "Rehe Paleontological Group" research has thus been pushed to the forefront of the world.
In 2001, the news edition of Nature magazine reported on how Paleontological research in China has yielded frequent results in recent years. The article talks about the competition between the two major institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (the Institute of Southern and Northern Institutes), especially the "tension" between them and the Geological Museum of China. Specifically, Ji Qiang, who had just stepped down as curator and became chief scientist at the Institute of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, said his enthusiasm for paleontological hotspots and his "great way" of tracking fossils excavated by farmers gave his peers a "headache."
During the interview, some academics revealed to this reporter that there were "big names" in the paleontological world who openly expressed their dissatisfaction with Ji Qiang's frequent "cross-border" -- "(They) said that no matter how Ji Qiang did, it was wrong for him to always break into other people's territory like him." ”
Ji Qiang smiled and gladly accepted this "accusation". But he sees himself as purely truth-seeking, while his critics are trapped by the department's gains and losses. He criticized the division of "hills" in the academic circles, which in fact narrowed the vision and pattern of scientific researchers.
"For example, a dinosaur person went to the field to investigate, found a fossil that has nothing to do with his research field, often ignored, that is, took it back and threw it in a drawer, completely lacking sensitivity, wasting precious research materials, and delaying the progress of many important research. Administratively, this is a failure. ”
Since 1995, Ji Qiang has also discovered rare fossils such as Shenzhou Dragon, Huaxia Jaw Dragon, Golden Phoenix Bird, Shenzhou Bird, Auspicious Bird, Rehe Beast, Hair Beast, Archaeopteryx, Chinese Bag Beast, Chinese Ancient Fruit, Archaeopteryx, and studied tentacles throughout dinosaurs, ancient birds, ancient mammals and paleobotany.
In Science and Nature, two major international academic journals, Ji Qiang published a total of 27 papers signed as authors.
In 1997, Science magazine in the United States first reported on the Chinese dragon bird
Looking back on more than 40 years of scientific research career, Ji Qiang regards the "Chinese Dragon Bird" as his most important and proudest discovery - because of "this guy", he was involved in the "Dragon Bird Dispute" at home and abroad, thus embarking on a special research path, and "finally solved the problem of bird origin that has not been solved for more than 140 years in his lifetime".
In 2015, Ji Qiang made a bold proposal in his book "Soaring Dragons: The Origins of China's Long-feathered Dinosaurs and Birds" – given the increasingly unclear definition of birds, it is difficult to give an exact biological definition to distinguish dinosaurs from birds. He suggested abolishing the "ornithischia" and establishing the "dinosaur order", and dividing the "sauropod subclass" and "ornithopod subclass" under the dinosaur order.
He set his sights on the future even further, 50 years or even a century later.
"There may not be many people responding to this proposal right now. But it's like our ancestor Huxley suggested in 1868 that birds and dinosaurs might be related, which everyone thought was incredible, and then I proved it more than 120 years later, right? ”
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > look for "the first animal in history to have long eyes."</h1>
In 2018, due to the accidental acquisition of an ancient human skull from Harbin, Ji Qiang once again "stepped" into the field of ancient human research.
It turns out that this is the most complete and largest fossil of an ancient human skull in the world. The publication of relevant research papers and data has attracted the envy of international paleoanthropological peers. He and Professor Ni Xijun's team worked together to discover a third branch of ancient humans that evolved independently in East Asia, the "homolongi", which is also the sister group closest to our modern people.
If you're lucky, you might be able to unravel the mystery of the "Denisovans," the most exciting discovery of molecular paleoanthropology in the last decade. Apart from a few teeth and half-amputated phalanges, this vanished group of ancient humans left little morphological information, but it has been shown to leave a special "genetic legacy" to the Tibetans living on the Tibetan Plateau today and the Melanesians on the Australian islands of South Asia.
The paleontologist, who is too old, is still on the move: tracking dinosaur fossils on the Border between China and Vietnam, hosting and promoting research projects in a laboratory in Hebei, and planning and planning for scientific research funding.
At the end of the interview, I asked Ji Qiang: What other puzzles do you want to solve in your lifetime about the 3.5 billion-year-long history of life origin and evolution on Earth?
"I have a special idea to solve - to find the first animal on Earth to have long eyes." He suddenly came to his senses: Hundreds of millions of years ago, many creatures were eyeless, such as polyps, sponges and porous worms. Some of them float around in the water, opening their mouths to filter out other microorganisms for nutrients. But when evolution reached the point where it became active in ingesting food, biological evolution accelerated, "so, I'd love to figure this out." ”
"At the moment, I don't have [fossil evidence] on hand, but I know where to look." He sold the guanzi. The annoying old question came up again—"Do you think people will say that I am messing around and being nosy again when the time comes?" ”
He was like a child plotting a prank, laughing.
Southern People Weekly reporter Xu Linling photo / Interviewee provided Cover image / Reporter Liang Chen