Recently, Dr. Huang Bing et al from Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology Chinese Academy of Sciences and Denmark published the latest research achievements on “Lilliput effect” of brachiopod faunas of South China following the terminal Ordovician mass extinction in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. In the immediate aftermath of global extinctions, organisms were normally much smaller than those prior to these events. This ‘Lilliput Effect’ can be subdivided into two types: 1) a specific type, following the original definition of the effect which targets species-level taxa associated with inhospitable environments, and 2) a more general type, related to the reactions of higher-rank taxa above the species-level. The body sizes of brachiopods from South China through the Ordovician and Silurian transition (Late Katian, Hirnantian, and earliest Rhuddanian) are compared at generic, superfamilial, ordinal, and class levels. The results indicate that the body sizes of the taxa of lower rank (e.g. genus-level) are highly variable within these different intervals. The type of evidence for the Lilliput Effect through the end Ordovician mass extinction is thus quite different from that of the end Permian mass extinction probably reflecting differences in the intensity of these two major bioevents. However, the relationships between the contrasting trends in body-size change of some taxa of higher rank (e.g. at the ordinal-level) and the relative dominance of these taxa in the latest Ordovician and earliest Silurian suggest that the brachiopods of the two major Ordovician groups, the strophomenoids and orthoids, adopted different survival strategies during and immediately after the crisis from those of the pentamerides and rhynchonellides, that were common in Silurian assemblages. Huang Bing, David A.T. Harper, Zhan Renbin and Rong Jiayu. 2010. Can the Lilliput Effect be detected in the brachiopod faunas of South China following the terminal Ordovician mass extinction? Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Volume 285, 277-286.
FOSSIL DINOFLAGELLATES OF CHINA edited by Prof. He Chengquan, Prof. Song Zhichen and Prof. Zhu Youhua from Nanging Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences has been published recently. This volume is divided into eight main chapters. The first seven chapters concern an introduction to the study of fossil and living dinoflagellates. A final chapter is the systematic classification of fossil dinoflagellates of China. It summarizes fossil dinoflagellate taxa published before the year 2006 in China. A total of 213 genera 13 subgenera and about 1000 species (forms) including subspecies and varietates are basically collected.
The Permian–Triassic Boundary event at 252.2 Ma marks the largest extinction of marine fauna in the Phanerozoic and there is a wide consensus that the extinction coincided with an intense oceanic anoxic event. The stratotype of the Changhsingian Stage, precisely constrained by the PTB Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) and the GSSP for the Wuchiapingian–Changhsingian Boundary, both at Meishan in southern China, is well-documented in respect to geochronology and the pattern of extinction. Here we report secular trends in bulk isotopic parameters and lipid biomarkers in a core spanning 214mof stratigraphic section across the PTB and through the entire Changhsingian interval. Our analysis of these data, viewed in the context of relative sea level change and strontium isotopes, reveals distinct shifts in paleoenvironmental conditions and profound changes in plankton ecology well before and following the biological extinction event. Specifically, patterns of steroids and triterpenoids indicate a marine plankton community that was heavily dominated by bacteria during the late Wuchiapingian, middle Changhsingian and early Griesbachian stages. Secular trends in aromatic hydrocarbons diagnostic for anoxygenic green sulphur bacteria (Chlorobiaceae) identify periods when euxinic conditions extended into the photic zone during the entire Changhsingian stage. Here also, the δ15Nof organic nitrogenprogressively shifted frompositive values around+2 or+3‰to？1‰coincident with a sharp negative excursion in δ13Corg and slightly postdating the sharp minimum in δ13C values of inorganic carbon that occurs at the top of Bed 24. These results, together the published chronology indicate that conditions unfavourable for aerobiosis existed in the marine photic zone at Meishan for 1.5 million years prior to the main phase of the biological extinction. The induction of marine euxinic conditions, worldwide, at the end of the Permian was likely a consequence of the aggregation of Pangea and the uplift, weathering and transport of nutrients to the ocean well in advance of the PTB. The protracted and widespread nature of the ensuing oceanic anoxic event suggests a causal association with the mass extinction.
？ Changqun Cao, Gordon D. Love, Lindsay E. Hays, Wei Wang, Shuzhong Shen, Roger E. Summons,2009, Biogeochemical evidence for euxinic oceans and ecological disturbance presaging the end-Permian mass extinction event, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 281 (2009) 188–201
A research team from Nanging Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, recently published their research"Supraspecific Taxa of the Bivalvia first named, described, and published in China" (1927-2007) in the University of Kansas Paleontological Contributions New Series 17. The research team contacted the research first in 2006 at the request of Prof. Joeseph Carter, the supervisor of the Treatise for Bivalvia Class from the Paleontological Institute, University of Kansas. Researchers spent over three years colleting information and systematically categorizing the bivalvia first named, described, and published in China. They listed altogether 19 families and subfamilies, 209 genus and subgenus under the bivalvia class. In the old edition of Treatise for bivalvia, there were only 3 genus compiled by Chinese scholars. Under each item, researchers included information such as the original description, type species and its origins. In addition to the categorizing work, researchers also corrected the names that were not in consistent with the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. In case of controversy in categorization of a certain unit, researchers either added different opinions from other researchers or pointed out the questions hovering around the unit. Chinese researchers' contribution to the Treatise for bivalvia helped further the integration of China's fossil research with the international academia.
Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology (Part L, Mollusca 4, Revised, Volume 2: Carboniferous and Permian Ammonoidea (Goniatitida and Prolecanitida) has been published recently.
