Archaeopteryx is one of the most famous fossil animals in the world. Its discovery shortly after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species offered strong support for the theory of evolution. For more than 160 years, this enigmatic “first bird” has fascinated scientists and the public alike. However, due to the limitations of preservation and technology, many mysteries about this ancient animal have remained locked in the Solnhofen limestone where they were found. The newly described Chicago specimen, acquired by the Field Museum in 2022, is the smallest known Archaeopteryx, roughly the size of a pigeon. It is nearly complete, with many bones preserved in relatively three dimensions, and includes rare traces of soft tissues such as skin, toe pads, and feathers—making it a landmark specimen in the study of early bird evolution.

A research team led by Professor WANG Min from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered two bird fossils in Jurassic-era rocks from Fujian Province in southeast China. These rocks date back approximately 149 million years. The fossils fill a spatiotemporal gap in the early evolutionary history of birds and provide the evidence yet that birds were diversified by the end of the Jurassic period.

Recently, an international research team identified rare snow leopard fossil records from various Panthera fossil sites across the Eurasian continent and used them to reveal the snow leopard’s unique evolutionary path. The study was authored by Associated Prof. JIANGZUO Qigao, from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Associated Prof. LI Xinhai from the Institute of Zoology of CAS, and several researchers from Italy, Portugal, and France. Their work was published in Science Advances. Prof. DENG Tao and WANG Shiqi, from IVPP are co-corresponding authors.

Despite the long history of consumption of fermented dairy, little is known about how the fermented microbes were utilized and evolved over human history. Here, by retrieving ancient DNA of Bronze Age kefir cheese (~3,500 years ago) from the Xiaohe cemetery, a group of Chinese scientists explored past human-microbial interactions.

According to a study published in Current Biology on May 22, the genetic components of the ancient populations in the western Tibetan Plateau are closest to ancient populations in the southern Tibetan Plateau, and their major genetic components have been maintained over the past 3,500 years. In addition, these ancient populations in the western Tibetan Plateau had complex and frequent interactions with ancient populations inside and outside the plateau. Contact to FU Qiaomei: fuqiaomei@ivpp.ac.cn

Mammaliaforms are extinct and extant organisms that are closely related to mammals. Studying mammaliaforms helps scientists understand the evolutionary processes that led to various mammalian features. In two consecutive studies in Nature, Dr. MAO Fangyuan and Dr. ZHANG Chi from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with colleagues from Australia and the United States, recently reported two Jurassic mammaliaforms from China, revealing the earliest dental diversification, mandibular middle ears, and articular-quadrate joint transformation of mammaliaforms.