palaeontologist
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 fossi ...
at the
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 sugges ...
(IVPP),
Chinese Academy of Sciences
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Repub ...
, who has made important fossil discoveries on
Cenozoic
The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configu ...
mammals
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fu ...
. 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 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 ...
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 Bio ...
, and
environmental change Environmental change is a change or disturbance of the environment most often caused by human influences and natural ecological processes. Environmental changes include various factors, such as natural disasters, human interferences, or animal ...
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
''Coelodonta'' (, from the Greek κοιλία, ''koilía'' and οδούς, ''odoús'', "hollow tooth", in reference to the deep grooves of their molars) is an extinct genus of rhinoceros that lived in Eurasia between 3.7 million years to 10,000 ...
'') on 22 August 2007. After painstaking excavation, they unearthed the skull, jaw bone and
cervical vertebra
In tetrapods, cervical vertebrae (singular: 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 ...
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 in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million 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
The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Tib ...
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 gre ...
, 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,
Gansu Province
Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province.
The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...
, a transitional fossil 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 unicor ...
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'' 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
"''Acinonyx kurteni''", or the Linxia cheetah, is a discredited fossil specimen of an extinct Acinonyx, cheetah discovered in China. The scientific name was assigned for the skull that was originally described to be that of an extinct species of ...
'' or the Lynxia cheetah. The
cheetah
The cheetah (''Acinonyx jubatus'') is a large cat native to Africa and central Iran. It is the fastest land animal, estimated to be capable of running at with the fastest reliably recorded speeds being , and as such has evolved specialized ...
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
''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Scie ...
''. 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 "r ...
, 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.