First of all, to explain the concept, fossil research generally refers to paleontology and paleontological fossil research, but many people confuse fossil research with archaeological research, saying that the study of paleontological fossils is to engage in archaeology. In fact, the two are really not the same thing. Generally speaking, archaeological research is mainly the study of human cultural relics after the Neolithic Era (about 10,000 years ago), which is closely related to the research scope of social sciences and history; while fossil research is mainly the study of paleontology before the Neolithic era and Paleolithic human fossils and their relics. Although from the perspective of studying the history of human development, the Paleolithic age has an important connection with the Neolithic era, after all, the biological appearance, geological environment and neolithic biological appearance and geological environment of the Paleolithic era and beyond are quite different. Therefore, when studying fossils, more to use the method of geology, fossils belong to the research category of geology, the discipline category belongs to the natural sciences; while archaeological research is more applied to the method of history, which belongs to the category of history. The upper limit of fossil research can begin from the time of life on Earth, while the lower limit of archaeological research is different for each country, and China ends with the fall of the Ming Dynasty.
From this point of view, the fossil and archaeological research objects have roughly a time boundary of about 10,000 years ago, that is, the end of the Paleolithic Age. So, something excavated in the formation, such as an animal bone, if it is pre-Neolithic, we treat it as a fossil. But there are some special cases that are also treated as fossils. For example, in the Banpo cultural site in Xi'an (about 7,000 years ago in the late Neolithic period), deer, cattle, pigs, guesses, bamboo rats and other animal bones have been found, although these animals are no different from the living, and we still regard it as fossils. In layman's terms, fossil research is people's study of the history of life on the earth, and archaeological research is people's study of the history of human civilization. If it is a fossil study, it seems that the archaeological study of the history of life on Earth also seems to make sense.
As we all know, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Chinese archaeology, and the starting point of century-old archaeology is a major discovery of the Yangshao culture that lasted for 2300 years in 1921 in the last century. It was in Yangshao Village that archaeologists revealed the humanistic light of prehistoric China and opened the door to the roots of Chinese culture. Mention of the birth of Chinese archaeological research has to mention a Swede Anderson, who received a doctorate in geology from uppsala University in Sweden in 1901 and went to Antarctica twice for geological expeditions. In 1910, the International Geological Society held its eleventh congress in Stockholm, Sweden, and Anderson was designated secretary general of the conference. At that time, the conference secretariat organized a global mineral resources survey, and Based on the results of the survey, Anderson edited and published the survey collections of "World Mineral Resources" and "World Coal Mine Resources", which attracted the attention of the Beiyang Government of China. In May 1914, Anderson was invited to China to serve as a consultant to the Mining Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, helping China to discover iron ore, coal and other mineral deposits in Hebei, Henan, Shanxi and other places.
In the process of investigating mineral resources, Anderson gradually became interested in paleontological fossils, and together with other paleontological experts, they discovered the Zhoukoudian Peking Man site. Please note that the birth of Chinese archaeology was actually triggered by the Swedish interest in fossil research, in 1920, Anderson's assistant Liu Changshan went to Henan to investigate paleontological fossils, liu Changshan collected and purchased more than 600 stone tool specimens in Yangshao Village, Shichi County, Sanmenxia City, Henan Province, and brought them back to Beijing. After reading the specimens, Anderson predicted that there might be Stone Age sites near Yangshao Village, so in April 1921, together with Liu Changshan, he visited Yangshao again and found some polished pottery fragments and stone tools such as stone tools.
In October 1921, Anderson and Yuan Fuli of the Central Geological Survey institute and others began formal excavations in Yangshao Village, excavating a total of 17 sites and 10 tombs, and found that the site area was about 240,000 square meters, the average thickness of the cultural layer reached 3 meters, and a large number of stone tools, pottery and bone tools were excavated. Based on the excavated cultural relics, Anderson judged that this area is a remnant of ancient Chinese culture and named it Yangshao culture according to international archaeological practices. In 1923, Anderson published "Ancient Chinese Culture", which published the archaeological excavations and research results of Yangshao culture to the world. The excavation of Yangshao culture in 1921 was the first organized and planned scientific archaeological excavation in China, which marked the establishment of modern Chinese archaeology and filled the gap in the history of China's ancient cultural development, especially the Stone Age.
The origin of Chinese paleontological fossil research is the fish fossil of Daxin House Village in Lingyuan, Liaoning Province
Then, since the birth of Chinese archaeological research with the history of Chinese prehistory civilization as the object of study was triggered by this Swede named Anderson, and its origin is Yangshao Village, Shichi County, Sanmenxia City, Henan Province, who is the initiator of the study of Chinese paleontological fossils with the history of life on the earth as the research object, and where is its origin?
The answer is the French naturalist missionary Armand David and the American geologist Professor Griep, whose origin is the Daxin House Village in Lingyuan City, western Liaoning, the core area of the Rehe biota.
History goes back to 1862, when the naturalist and missionary Frenchman Armand David joined the mission and was soon sent to Beijing, the capital of the mysterious ancient eastern country. In addition to his missionary work, he began collecting materials for a natural museum. This French missionary was very dedicated, according to records, there are more than 1,200 kinds of birds in China, he collected more than 800 kinds, and the most we ordinary people have seen is only one or two hundred species. It is said that China's elk and giant pandas were named by him and introduced abroad. In 1863, Armand David came to Rehe Province, and when he inspected the vicinity of Lingyuan, he found that many thin pale yellow slabs were found on the stone walls of many peasant houses near the Daxin house in Lingyuan City, western Liaoning Province, and many small fish were scattered on the stone slabs. David gleefully and amazed to collect a batch of fish fossils, which were later named "Dai's wolffin fish", which was the first time in modern times that the Rehe fossil was discovered by paleontological researchers, so the Dai's wolffin fish is also known as the first fossil of the Rehe biota. The discovery of the Dai's wolffin has unveiled the mystery of the birthplace of the world's famous ancient creatures in Western Liaoning, and the history of life on earth has been slowly rewritten unconsciously.
In 1863, David transferred the fossils to the French fish expert Sauvage. In 1880, Sovaz published a paper stating that the fossilized fish was a new species of the family, and in gratitude to Father David, Sovaz named the new species after David. However, the classification of Sovaz is not accurate. Until 1901, the famous British ichthyologist Woodward pointed out that the fossilized fish should actually be classified in the genus Wolffin, but in order to be consistent with the previous name, while commemorating Father David, who died a year ago, the species name of the fish remained unchanged. Regrettably, the positive specimen of the Sovaz study was thought to have been lost in 1968.
Mention this Frenchman Armand David, why mention the American geologist Professor Gripp, please take my time, Graep (1870-1946), German-American geologist, paleontologist, stratigrapher. Greep is a versatile geologist. In 1920, he was invited by Cai Yuanpei and the Institute of Geological Survey to come to China as the director of the Paleontology Department of the Geological Survey of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, and a professor of paleontology in the Department of Geology of Peking University. After the Beiyang government established the Academia Sinica, he became a communications researcher at the Institute of Geology of the Academia Sinica in 1929. In 1934, he became the head of the Department of Geology at Peking University. Greep devoted the second half of his life entirely to the great cause of laying the foundation for Chinese paleontology and stratigraphy. He is one of the founding members of the Geological Society of China, served as a director and vice president of the Society, and participated in almost all major academic activities in the geological community with Ding Wenjiang, Weng Wenhao, Zhang Hongzhao and Li Siguang in poor health. He trained a generation of Chinese geologists, most of the earliest stratigraphic paleontologists in China, most of whom came from Greep's disciples.
Lingyuan geographical location
In early November 1923, the village of Daxin House in Lingyuan, a land in northeastern Liaoning, China, was wrapped in a layer of silver and white, and the eaves of the house in the early morning were hung with crystal icicles. Previously, no expedition team had ever entered Rehe Province for field excavations during this season. A small geological field expedition from Peking University in China quietly arrived in the footsteps of the Frenchman Armand David in the cold winter months. The team was led by Professor Greep and Mr. Weng Wenhao, who, as mentioned above, was an internationally renowned geologist, and Mr. Weng was one of the earliest geologists in China, who came to investigate the excavation of the strata containing wolffin fossils in Lingyuan.
Fossil of The Wolffin Fish
The excavation work was very smooth, because after all, there were too many wolffin fish fossils in that property, so It was Nian Griep who first proposed the concept of "Jehol Series" based on the formation containing wolffin fossils, and the "Hot River System" specifically refers to the fossil-containing formations in the Lingyuan area. In 1928, he proposed the concept of "Rehe Fauna" in the Geological History of China, representing such a set of animal fossil combinations in the strata. Since then, Japanese scholars who have flocked to this formation have successively found some vertebrate fossils such as Manchurian turtles, Manchurian crocodiles, and Yabu dragons. It was not until 1962 that Chinese geologists began to study stratigraphic paleontology in this area. And there was a substantial contribution. On the basis of the research on invertebrates and biological strata, the famous paleontologist Academician Gu Zhiwei developed Griep's "Rehe System" and "Rehe Fauna", established the "Rehe Biota", and believed that its representative fossil genera include Oriental Leaf Limb Jie, Three-tailed Ephemeral Ephemeral, and Dai's Wolffin Fish. Since then, the study of the Rehe biota has not been interrupted. The Daxin House Village, the core of the Rehe biota in Western Liaoning, is undoubtedly called the origin of the research on chinese stock biological fossils.
One might ask why the origin of Chinese paleontological fossils is not the Zhoukoudian Ape Man Site in Beijing, and the answer is as follows In February 1918, the chemist Gibb, J.M. discovered fragments of bone cemented with red clay from Zhoukoudian Keel Mountain. On March 22 of the same year, The Swedish geologist and archaeologist Johan Gunnar Andersson went to The Keel Mountain to investigate and found a pile of ancient animal fossils in the Zhoukoudian area. In 1921, austrian paleontologist Zdansky, O.) excavated paleontological fossils at Zhoukoudian Keel Mountain; in August of the same year, Anderson and the American paleontologist Granger, W.) discovered paleontological fossils and quartz rock products piled up at the Keel Mountain site during their investigation of the Zhoukoudian site area, and numbered it site No. 53, that is, the Beijing Ape Man Site. In the same year, the second location of Zhoukoudian was also discovered. In 1923, Shi Dansky came to the Zhoukoudian site again for excavations, and the excavation layers were equivalent to the lower parts of the 4th and 5th layers, and a fossil human tooth was found in the accumulation. In 1926, the excavations in the twelfth year of the Republic of China (1923) were sorted out, and the two fossils of human teeth found at the Peking Ape Man site were named "Peking Man".
The answer is simple and clear, the discovery of the fossil of The Ape Man in Zhoukoudian, Beijing began in 1918, much later than the discovery of the Fossil of the Wolffin Fish by the French for the Rehe Biota in 1863, the name of the Peking Ape Man is 1926, and the name of the Dai's Wolf fin fish is 1880, and the name of the "Rehe System" is 1923, which is much earlier than the name of the "Peking Ape Man"; and the organized excavation of the Beijing Zhoukoudian Ape Man is 1923, and the organized excavation of the Rehe Biota also began in 1923. Of course, if you say that the discovery, excavation, and naming significance of "Peking Ape Man" is far greater than that of "Wolf Fin Fish", I also agree with this, but you must not forget that from the perspective of evolution, human beings evolved from fish, but you do not believe in evolution, then there is no point in discussing "Peking Ape Man".
Therefore, if it is said that the excavation of Yangshao culture, an important symbol of the history of Chinese civilization in Yangshao Village, Sanmenxia City, Henan Province, in 1921 was the first organized and planned scientific archaeological excavation, which marked the establishment of modern Chinese archaeology, then the organized scientific excavation of the first fossil of the Rehe biota in the history of life on the earth in 1923 also marked the formal establishment of Chinese paleontological fossil research, and the same origin of Chinese archaeology was Yangshao Village, Shichi County, Sanmenxia City, Henan Province. The origin of The study of paleontological fossils in China is the Daxin House Village in Lingyuan, Liaoning Province, the core of the Rehe biota.
From 1921, 2021 is the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Chinese archaeological research, and from 1923, 2023 is the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Chinese paleontological fossil research, not only that, 2023 is also the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the important concept of the history of life in the Mesozoic Era of the Earth, "Rehe Biota".