Yang Zhongjian, also Yang Chung-chien (; 1 June 1897 – 15 January 1979),

courtesy name A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.Ulrich Theo ...

Keqiang (), also known as C.C. (Chung Chien) Young, was a Chinese paleontologist and zoologist. He was one of China's foremost vertebrate

paleontologists Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of foss ...

. He has been called the "Father of Chinese Vertebrate Paleontology".

Biography

Yang was born in

Hua County, Shaanxi Huazhou District (), formerly Hua County or Huaxian (), is a district of Weinan, Shaanxi province, China. It was upgraded from a county to a district in 2015. The district spans an area of , and has a population of about 324,300 as of 2012. H ...

, China. He graduated from the Department of Geology of

Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charte ...

in 1923, and in 1927 received his doctorate from the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

in Germany. In 1928 he worked for the

Cenozoic Research Laboratory The Cenozoic Research Laboratory () of the Geological Survey of China was established within the Peking Union Medical College in 1928 by Canadian paleoanthropologist Davidson Black and Chinese geologists Ding Wenjing and Weng Wenhao for the rese ...

of the

Geological Survey of China The China Geological Survey (CGS) () is a government-owned, not-for-profit, Chinese organization researching China's mineral resources. It is a public institution managed by the State Council’s ministries and commissions responsible for geologic ...

and took charge of excavations at the

Peking Man Peking Man (''Homo erectus pekinensis'') is a subspecies of '' H. erectus'' which inhabited the Zhoukoudian Cave of northern China during the Middle Pleistocene. The first fossil, a tooth, was discovered in 1921, and the Zhoukoudian Cave has s ...

Site at

Zhoukoudian Zhoukoudian Area () is a town and an area located on the east Fangshan District, Beijing, China. It borders Nanjiao and Fozizhuang Townships to its north, Xiangyang, Chengguan and Yingfeng Subdistricts to its east, Shilou and Hangcunhe Towns t ...

. He held professorial posts at the Geological Survey of China,

, and Northwest University in Xi'an. Yang's scientific work was instrumental in the creation of China's

Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP; ) of China is a research institution and collections repository for fossils, including many dinosaur and pterosaur specimens (many from the Yixian Formation). As its name sugg ...

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...

, which today houses one of the most important collections of fossil vertebrates in the world. He was director of both the IVPP and the Beijing Natural History Museum. He supervised the collection of fossil remains of and research on dinosaurs in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

from 1933 until the 1970s. He presided over some of the most important fossil discoveries in history, such as those of the prosauropods, ''

Lufengosaurus ''Lufengosaurus'' (, meaning "Lufeng lizard") is a genus of massospondylid dinosaur which lived during the Early Jurassic period in what is now southwestern China. Discovery, taxonomy and research During the late 1930s geologist Bien Meinian ...

'' and ''

Yunnanosaurus ''Yunnanosaurus'' ( ) is an extinct genus of sauropodomorph dinosaur that lived approximately 199 to 183 million years ago in what is now the Yunnan Province, in China, for which it was named. ''Yunnanosaurus'' was a large sized, moderately-bui ...

''; the

ornithopod Ornithopoda () is a clade of ornithischian dinosaurs, called ornithopods (), that started out as small, bipedal running grazers and grew in size and numbers until they became one of the most successful groups of herbivores in the Cretaceous w ...

, '' Tsintaosaurus''; and the gigantic

sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', ' lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their ...

, '' Mamenchisaurus''; as well as China's first

stegosaur Stegosauria is a group of herbivorous ornithischian dinosaurs that lived during the Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. Stegosaurian fossils have been found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, predominantly in what is now North America, Euro ...

, '' Chialingosaurus''.

Legacy

Yang's cremated remains are interred behind the museum at the Zhoukoudian site alongside those of his colleagues,

Pei Wenzhong PEI or Pei may refer to: Places *Matecaña International Airport, Pereira, Colombia, IATA code PEI * Pei County (沛县), Jiangsu, China *Pei Commandery (沛郡), a commandery in Chinese history *Prince Edward Island, a province of Canada *Pei, ...

and

Jia Lanpo Jia Lanpo (; November 25, 1908 in Yutian, Hebei – July 8, 2001 in Beijing) was a Chinese palaeoanthropologist, considered a founder of Chinese anthropology. He graduated from the Huiwen Academy in Beijing in 1929 and went on to work as a ...

. In 2007, when

Lü Junchang Lü Junchang (; 1965 – 9 October 2018) was a Chinese palaeontologist and professor at the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. An expert on Mesozoic reptiles, he described and named dozens of dinosaur and pterosaur taxa ...

and colleagues described a second species of ''Yunnanosaurus'', they named it ''Yunnanosaurus youngi'' in Yang's honour.Lu, J., Li, T., Zhong, S., Azuma, Y., Fujita, M., Dong, Z., and Ji, Q. (2007). "New yunnanosaurid dinosaur (Dinosauria, Prosauropoda) from the Middle Jurassic Zhanghe Formation of Yuanmou, Yunnan Province of China." ''Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum'', 6: 1-15.

Biography

Legacy

References

Further reading