A research team led by Profs. ZHU Min, LU Jing, and ZHU You’an from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences published two back to back cover stories in the journal Nature on March 4, reporting new discoveries about the origin of bony fishes.These discoveries enhance our understanding of the early radiation of jawed vertebrates, refute the hypothesis that the ancestral bony fish was more similar to lobe finned fishes, and clarify the early evolutionary trajectory of jaws and teeth in bony fishes.

An international research team discovered advanced stone tool technologies dating to 160,000–72,000 years ago at the Xigou site in central China. The findings, based on multidisciplinary methods including luminescence dating and traceological analysis, provide the earliest known evidence of hafted composite tools in East Asia. The study reveals that hominins in the region exhibited sophisticated technological innovation and adaptability, challenging previous assumptions of long-term technological conservatism in early East Asia.

After 2017–2019 excavations, archaeobotanical analysis found barley (oldest: 9133–8970 cal yr BP, high naked barley proportion) and pulses, confirming barley gathering as a key subsistence strategy. Microliths with "sickle gloss" and cereal-processing grinding stones showed a harvest-to-milling sequence; pistachio shells/wild apple seeds indicated broad plant use. Palynological/isotopic data linked a wetter climate (intensified South Asian monsoons) to these practices. This collaboration pushes Uzbekistan’s cereal use back ~4,000 years, offering critical data for Central Asia’s Pre-Pottery Neolithic studies and inland Asian agricultural origins.

A new fossil discovery shows that the lush ancient forests of China 120 million years ago were home to brilliantly colored extinct birds with iridescent feathers. This unexpected breakthrough reported by an international team in the journal eLife is the result of advances in ultrafine microscopic sectioning of fossil feathers, a new approach to the microscopic study of the three-dimensional arrangement of pigment packages inside fossil feathers, and the key application of powerful supercomputer modeling of light interactions with feather structures to reconstruct the specific iridescent colors that the feathers produced.

Multidisciplinary Evidence Reveals Climate – Carbon-Cycle Interactions During the Carnian Pluvial EpisodeThe Mesozoic Era was marked by long-term greenhouse climates and repeated hyperthermal events—periods of rapid global warming—that profoundly affected life.