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Study on the Jehol Biota: Recent advances and future prospects

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Abstract

The Jehol Biota is an Early Cretaceous terrestrial fossil assemblage of paramount significance, and its core distribution areas are western Liaoning, northern Hebei, and southeastern Inner Mongolia. Despite with a research history of more than 150 years, it started yielding important fossils until early 1990s, which include feathered dinosaurs, early birds, early mammals, flower-visiting insects, and early angiosperms. These discoveries have implications for understanding the origins and early evolution of several major organismal groups, as well as the origin and initial formation of modern terrestrial ecosystem. This review presents a brief introduction of the major discoveries, research history, and current understanding of this biota, and also provides future prospects for studying the Jehol Biota.

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Acknowledgements

We thank SUN Ge for his valuable comments on the manuscript, SUN Ge, HUANG Diying for discussions and help with relevant references, SUN Ge, REN Dong, HUANG Diying, JI Shuan, LUO Zhexi, ZHANG Jiangyong, LIU Jun and WANG Xiaolin for photographs, and in particular the team members of the 41688103 project for help. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41688103) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB18000000).

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  1. Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Beijing, 100044, China

    Xing Xu, Zhonghe Zhou, Yuan Wang & Min Wang

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Xu, X., Zhou, Z., Wang, Y. et al. Study on the Jehol Biota: Recent advances and future prospects. Sci. China Earth Sci. 63, 757–773 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-019-9509-3

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