john long（古脊椎动物学会主席、澳大利亚弗林德斯大学教授）

john long (president of the society of vertebrate paleontology, professor at flinders university, australia)



这是由三位顶尖科学家所讲述的关于中国化石的故事。它是视觉信息和高质量文字的完美结合，包含了精美而信息丰富的照片、绘图和其他形式的插图，超过了最苛刻的读者关于卓越的标准。

this book on the fossils of china is a perfect blend of visual information and high quality, detailed story telling by three leading scientists. this book contains beautiful and informative photos, drawings, and other forms of illustration, exceeding the standards of excellence of the most demanding readers.

robert reisz（加拿大多伦多大学教授，美国科学促进会会员）

robert reisz (professor at university of toronto, canada and fellow of the american association for the advancement of science)





2 8 8 | n at u r e | vo l 5 2 1 | 2 1 m ay 2 0 1 5

tracing the backbone in china’s rocks



xu xing relishes a bilingual book on the evolution of vertebrate life in his fabulously fossil-rich country.



china’s rich fossil resources have supplied many firsts — discoveries that have rewritten and helped to construct evolutionary history. the bilingual (english and chinese) from fish to human summarizes and highlights the spectacular chinese vertebrate fossil record and its place in the broader span of vertebrate life.



this volume, rich with illustrations, was produced by an international team of vertebrate palaeontologists. corwin sullivan wrote the english text with input from the other authors, wang yuan did the chinese translation and brian choo pro?duced the illustrations. (i work alongside all three, but was not involved with this book.) their effort has produced an excel?lent resource.



from fish to human describes 15 chinese faunas — collections of fossils of a similar age from the same general area — that highlight every major geological time period from the early cambrian to the late pleistocene epoch. the cambrian chengjiang biota, for example, dating to around 525 million years ago, contains the oldest known diverse multicellular animals, including the earliest vertebrates, such as the primitive, fishlike haikouichthys. it is shedding light on the rapid diversification of life known as the cambrian explosion.



flamboyant feathered dinosaurs from the roughly 125-million-year-old jehol biota, such as the four-winged microraptor and the gigantic tyrannosaur yutyrannus, have garnered much public attention; less known are the earlier silurian xiaoxiang and devonian zhongning faunas. the authors explain how discoveries from these have helped to establish the evolution of important structures such as jaws and limbs. entelognathus from xiaoxiang, for example, is a placoderm, or armoured fish, with the jawed face of an osteichthyan, or bony fish — a finding that blurs the bound-ary between major vertebrate groups.



each fauna or group of faunas is followed by a concise review of a related evolutionary transition. so the dis?cussion of how feath?ers evolved into their modern form fol-lows a description of the jehol biota, which yielded much of the fossil evidence for it.



the balance between specific discoveries and general evolutionary history allows a clear and current understanding of verte?brate evolution, and showcases the beauty of the extinct animals. thus stunning pho?tographs, for example of the exquisitely preserved fossils from the chengjiang biota, sit alongside remarkable reconstruc-tions of creatures and habitats. informative drawings show the family trees of major vertebrate groups and biological structures such as tetrapod limbs.

征程-从鱼到人的生命之旅 作者简介

舒柯文
加拿大维多利亚大学本科毕业，多伦多大学获得硕士，美国哈佛大学的博士毕业生。现为中国科学院古脊椎动物与古人类研究所副研究员，兼任学术刊物《古脊椎动物学报》的英文编辑。经常在中国和他的故乡加拿大进行野外古生物考察。不忙野外的时候会在研究所做恐龙和其他中生代脊椎动物的研究，或者努力学习汉语。这本书是他对古生物科普的首次主要尝试。
Corwin Sullivan is an associate research professor of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of Victoria, Canada before going on to earn an MSc degree at the University of Toronto at Mississauga and a PhD at Harvard University. He is the English editor of Vertebrata PalAsiatica, the Institute’s peer-reviewed scientific journal. When not busy with fieldwork in China or his native Canada, he pursues research focussing on dinosaurs and other Mesozoic vertebrates at the Institute, and studing Chinese hard in leisure time. From Fish to Human: the March of Vertebrate Life in China is his first major science outreach effort.

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