palaeontologist
Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...
at the
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology
The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP; ) of People's Republic of China, China is a research institution and collections repository for fossils, including many dinosaur and pterosaur specimens (many from the Yixian For ...
(IVPP),
Chinese Academy of Sciences
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; ) is the national academy for natural sciences and the highest consultancy for science and technology of the People's Republic of China. It is the world's largest research organization, with 106 research i ...
, who has made important fossil discoveries on
Cenozoic
The Cenozoic Era ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterized by the dominance of mammals, insects, birds and angiosperms (flowering plants). It is the latest of three g ...
mammals
A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three middle e ...
. He is a professor of vertebrate palaeontology, deputy director of the Academic Committee, and deputy director of Key Laboratory of Evolutionary Systematics of Vertebrates at IVPP.
Peking University
Peking University (PKU) is a Public university, public Types of universities and colleges in China#By designated academic emphasis, university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of the Peop ...
Deng works at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology as a researcher and PhD supervisor. His specialization is in the study of mammalian fossils,
biostratigraphy
Biostratigraphy is the branch of stratigraphy which focuses on correlating and assigning relative ages of rock strata by using the fossil assemblages contained within them.Hine, Robert. "Biostratigraphy." ''Oxford Reference: Dictionary of Biology ...
, and
environmental change
Environment most often refers to:
__NOTOC__
* Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...
s during the Late Cenozoic. Deng currently assumes several positions, including deputy director for the Academic Committee of IVPP, and professor of palaeontology at the graduate school of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also the deputy editor-in-chief of two technical journals, ''Vertebrata PalAsiatica'' and ''Evolution of Life''.
Research achievements
Deng has published more than 120 technical papers on palaeontology. He and his team had first major breakthrough in the Zanda Basin, from where they discovered fossil materials of Tibetan wooly rhinoceros ('' Coelodonta antiquitatis'') on 22 August 2007. After painstaking excavation, they unearthed the skull, jaw bone and
cervical vertebra
In tetrapods, cervical vertebrae (: vertebra) are the vertebrae of the neck, immediately below the skull. Truncal vertebrae (divided into thoracic and lumbar vertebrae in mammals) lie caudal (toward the tail) of cervical vertebrae. In sauropsid s ...
of the adult wooly rhinoceros. An analysis through animal group comparison and paleomagnetic test indicated the fossil's geological age to be about 3.7 million years old and in the middle of the
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its great impact to evolution of mammals with respect to climate changes. His team reported in 2011 that the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is actually the place of origin of the woolly rhinos during the Pliocene
Ice Age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and g ...
, from where they evolved and spread out into other Asian and European regions.
In 2012 he and his team reported the discovery of a 4.6 million-year-old three-toed horse ''Hipparion zandaense'' from Tibet. In 2013 they discovered ''Sinotherium lagrelii'' from Linxia Basin in
Linxia County
Linxia County (, Xiao'erjing: ) is a County (People's Republic of China), county in the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, province of Gansu, China.
Geography
Linxia County is located in central and south-western parts of the Linxia Hui Autonomo ...
,
Gansu Province
Gansu is a provinces of China, province in Northwestern China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeastern part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibetan Plateau, Ti ...
, a
transitional fossil
A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both an ancestral group and its derived descendant group. This is especially important where the descendant group is sharply differentiated by gross ...
in the lineage of one-horned rhinoceros, the basis of the
unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead.
In European literature and art, the unico ...
legend in the region; and a new hornless rhino ''Aceratherium porpani'' from Thailand.
In 2021, Tao Deng and his colleagues Xiaokang Lu and Shanqin Chen discovered a new ''
Paraceratherium
''Paraceratherium'' is an extinct genus of hornless rhinocerotoids belonging to the family Paraceratheriidae. It is one of the largest terrestrial mammals that has ever existed and lived from the early to late Oligocene epoch (34–23 ...
'' species in the Linxia Basin which they named ''Paraceratherium linxiaense''.
Discrediting forged fossil
Deng was on the news headline around the world for revealing a fossil forgery, '' Acinonyx kurteni'' or the Lynxia cheetah. The
cheetah
The cheetah (''Acinonyx jubatus'') is a large Felidae, cat and the Fastest animals, fastest land animal. It has a tawny to creamy white or pale buff fur that is marked with evenly spaced, solid black spots. The head is small and rounded, wit ...
was reported in 2009, and was claimed to be the oldest true cheetah species ever discovered. Deng was the first to note the unusual fossil description while proofreading the manuscript for publication of the discovery in the '' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA''. He immediately reported to ''PNAS'' that parts of the skull had been concocted from
plaster
Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, while "re ...
, and that pieces of bones looked like being glued together to create a unique skull. However, his objection to publication was rejected as he had no direct examination of the fossil.
After years of arguments in the scientific community, it was only in 2012 that Deng was allowed access to the original fossil upon invoking the ''PNAS'' data access policy, and on examination, his primary suspicions were proven correct, that the fossil was a deliberate fake. On 20 August 2012 one of the authors, Ji H. Mazák finally made a retraction in ''PNAS''.
Awards and honours
Deng was awarded with the Chinese national prize for outstanding dissertation in 2000.
Publications
*Tao Deng and Xue Xiangxu (1999). Chinese Fossil Horses of Equus and Their Environment '. China Scientific Books.
*Tao Deng (2000). ''Eighth China Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting Proceedings'' (Chinese Edition). Ocean Publications.
*Tao Deng (2000). ''Scientific Journey: to Search for Traces of the Ancient Beasts'' (Chinese Edition). Shanghai Science and Technology Press.
*Tao Deng (2010). ''Proceedings of the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Chinese Society of Vertebrate Paleontology''. China Scientific Books.
*Tao Deng (2013). (With Zhan-xiang Qiu, Zhu-ding Qiu, Chuan-kui Li, Zhao-qun Zhang, Ban-yue Wang, and Xiao-ming Wang) Neogene Land Mammal Stages/Ages of China: Toward the Goal to Establish an Asian Land Mammal Stage/Age Scheme. (With Zhan-xiang Qiu, Ban-yue Wang, Xiao-ming Wang, and Su-kuan Hou) Late Cenozoic Biostratigraphy of the Linxia Basin, Northwestern China. (With Xiao-ming Wang, Qiang Li, Zhu-ding Qiu, Guang-pu Xie, Ban-yue Wang, Zhan-xiang Qiu, Zhijie J. Tseng, and Gary T. Takeuchi) Neogene Mammalian Biostratigraphy and Geochronology of the Tibetan Plateau. In: Fossil Mammals of Asia: Neogene Biostratigraphy and Chronology '. Columbia University Press.