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

courtesy name A courtesy name ( zh, s=字, p=zì, l=character), also known as a style name, is an additional name bestowed upon individuals at adulthood, complementing their given name. This tradition is prevalent in the East Asian cultural sphere, particula ...

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 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 ...

. 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. His ...

, China. He graduated from the Department of Geology of

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 ...

in 1923, and in 1927 received his doctorate from the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...

in Germany. In 1928 he worked for the Cenozoic Research Laboratory of the

Geological Survey of China The China Geological Survey (CGS) () is a government-owned, China, Chinese organization researching China's mineral resources under the State Council of the People's Republic of China. According to the national land and resources survey plan, it ...

and took charge of excavations at the

Peking Man Peking Man (''Homo erectus pekinensis'', originally "''Sinanthropus pekinensis''") is a subspecies of '' H. erectus'' which inhabited what is now northern China during the Middle Pleistocene. Its fossils have been found in a cave some southw ...

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 to ...

. 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 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 ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, 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. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

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

prosauropod Sauropodomorpha ( ; from Greek, meaning "lizard-footed forms") is an extinct clade of long-necked, herbivorous, saurischian dinosaurs that includes the Sauropoda, sauropods and their ancestral relatives. Sauropods generally grew to very large siz ...

s ''

Lufengosaurus ''Lufengosaurus'' (, meaning "Lufeng lizard") is a genus of massospondylid dinosaur which lived during the Early Jurassic period in what is now southwestern China."Lufengosaurus." In: Dodson, Peter & Britt, Brooks & Carpenter, Kenneth & Forster, ...

'' 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-buil ...

'', the

ornithopod Ornithopoda () is a clade of ornithischian dinosaurs, called ornithopods (). They represent one of the most successful groups of herbivorous dinosaurs during the Cretaceous. The most primitive members of the group were bipedal and relatively sm ...

Tsintaosaurus ''Tsintaosaurus'' (; ''sic'' for the Chinese postal romanization, old transliteration "Tsingtao", meaning "Qingdao lizard") is a genus of Hadrosauridae, hadrosaurid dinosaur from China. It was about long and weighed . The type species is ''Tsin ...

'', 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 b ...

Mamenchisaurus ''Mamenchisaurus'' ( , or spelling pronunciation ) is an extinct genus of sauropod dinosaurs known for their remarkably long necks which made up nearly half the total body length. Numerous species have been assigned to the genus; however, the val ...

'', 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 (North America, Europe and Asia), Africa and South A ...

, ''

Chialingosaurus ''Chialingosaurus'' (meaning " Chialing Lizard") is a genus of herbivorous stegosaurian dinosaur similar to ''Kentrosaurus'' from the Upper Shaximiao Formation, Late Jurassic beds in Sichuan Province in China. Its age makes it one of the oldest ...

''.

Legacy

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

Pei Wenzhong Pei Wenzhong (; January 19, 1904 – September 18, 1982), or W. C. Pei, was a Chinese paleontologist, archaeologist and anthropologist born in Fengnan. He is considered a founding figure of Chinese anthropology. accessed 20 January 2015 Career ...

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