Yang Zhongjian
Yang Zhongjian (Chinese: 杨钟健; Wade–Giles: Yang Chung-chien; 1 June 1897 – 15 January 1979), courtesy name Keqiang (克强), also known as C.C. (Chung Chien) Young, was one of China's foremost vertebrate paleontologists. He has been called the "Father of Chinese Vertebrate Paleontology".
Biography
Yang was born in Hua County, Shaanxi, China. He graduated from the Department of Geology of Peking University in 1923, and in 1927 received his doctorate from the University of Munich in Germany. In 1928 he worked for the Cenozoic Research Laboratory of the Geological Survey of China and took charge of excavations at the Peking Man Site at Zhoukoudian.[1]
He held professorial posts at the Geological Survey of China, Peking University, and Northwest University in Xi'an. Yang's scientific work was instrumental in the creation of China's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, which today houses one of the most important collections of fossil vertebrates in the world. He was director of both the IVPP and the Beijing Natural History Museum.
He supervised the collection of fossil remains of and research on dinosaurs in China from 1933 until the 1970s. He presided over some of the most important fossil discoveries in history, such as those of the prosauropods, Lufengosaurus and Yunnanosaurus; the ornithopod, Tsintaosaurus; and the gigantic sauropod, Mamenchisaurus; as well as China's first stegosaur, Chialingosaurus.[2]
Legacy
Yang's cremated remains are interred behind the museum at the Zhoukoudian site alongside those of his colleagues, Pei Wenzhong and Jia Lanpo.[citation needed]
In 2007, when Lü Junchang and colleagues described a second species of Yunnanosaurus, they named it Yunnanosaurus youngi in Yang's honour.[3]
References
- ^ "Yang Zhongjian (1897–1979)". Peking Man Site Museum.
Chinese geologist and vertebrate palaeontologist. In 1928, he worked as a technician at the Geological Survey of China, and took charge of the excavation at Zhoukoudian. After the establishment of the Cenozoic Research Laboratory, he had been working as its director of Vertebrate Palaeontological Laboratory, the director of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology of Chinese Academy of Sciences respectively.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ Dong Zhiming (1992). Dinosaurian Faunas of China. China Ocean Press, Beijing. ISBN 3-540-52084-8.
- ^ Lu, J., Li, T., Zhong, S., Azuma, Y., Fujita, M., Dong, Z., and Ji, Q. (2007). "New yunnanosaurid dinosaur (Dinosauria, Prosauropoda) from the Middle Jurassic Zhanghe Formation of Yuanmou, Yunnan Province of China." Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum, 6: 1-15.
Further reading
- Norman, David (1970–1980). "Yang Zhongjian". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 25. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 383–385. ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
- Chinese paleontologists
- 1897 births
- 1979 deaths
- Scientists from Shaanxi
- Members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Members of Academia Sinica
- People from Weinan
- Peking University faculty
- Beijing Normal University faculty
- Chongqing University faculty
- Northwest University (China) faculty
- 20th-century zoologists
- Taxa named by Yang Zhongjian
- Paleontology in Shaanxi
- Peking University alumni
- Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni
- Victims of the Cultural Revolution