Pterosaur is the first flying vertebrate and the only extinct group on the earth. The knowledge of its reproduction, development and life history is limited. Here we report on a large block of specimen gathering more than two hundred eggs, embryos and bones of Hamipterus. Sixteen eggs contain 3D embryonic remains, which was the first discovery of 3D embryos. This paper led to the hypothesis that Hamipterus might have been less precocious than advocated for pterosaurs in general. The hind limbs have developed more rapidly compared to the forelimbs and might have been functional right after the animal hatched, suggesting newborns were likely to move around but were not able to fly. No tooth was found in the embryonic development, indicating newborns probably needed some parental care. The histological thin-sections from embryos to sub-adults all show fast growth bones. This paper also advanced the gregarious behavior of Hamipterus, and proposed that the Cretaceous storms might cause the mass mortality and buried fossils very fast.

Xuchang human fossils dating around 100 ka years ago, found at Lingjing site in Henan Province in 2007 and 2014, have attracted wide attentions of international paleoanthropology communities. Studies show that around the early part of the Late Pleistocene, some archaic Homo sapiens exhibited a morphological mosaic of East Asian and western contemporaries. During this period, many types of ancient humans of genetic mixture might exist in China. Xuchang human fossils provide a certain degree of support for the regional continuity of the evolutionary pattern of Chinese human fossils as well as their dynamic exchanges of European contemporaries. In this paper, we review the discovery, the history, the cranial reconstruction, and the research significance of Xuchang human fossils, as well as the related research progress on mammalian fossils, artificial stones, and bone tools, which are associated with Xuchang human remains. The future research prospects of Lingjing site are discussed. The findings of the Xuchang human fossils and the associated cultural relics provide important reference materials for discussing the physical characteristics and the behavior of human beings at that time in Lingjing site.

During the dinosaurs-birds transition, the most conspicuous morphological change is the abbreviation of the long bony tail. Due to the lack of transitional fossils, little is known about how that modification took place. In living birds, the tail ends in a compound ploughshaped element termed pygostyle that attaches the fan-shaped tail feathers, forming an indispensable flight apparatus. Based on comparative anatomical, histological and electrical scanning analyses, Wang et. al. suggested that the plough-shaped pygostyle and the tail fanning is evolutionally decoupled in the early avian history, which challenges the long-standing theory that these two features are coevolved. A plough-shaped pygostyle is distributed widely in Ornithuromorpha. Therefore, the rare occurrence of this structure in some enantiornithines is the result of convergence, as confirmed by a few other fossil birds, further highlighting that the early avian evolution is characterized by parallelism.

The study of bioinclusions in Cretaceous Burmese amber is one of the hotspots of current paleontological researches. Staphylinidae, or rove beetles, with its extraordinary morphological disparity and species diversity, is the largest family of animals. Recent years have witnessed discoveries of a wide variety of staphylinids in Burmese amber, to provide important materials for studying the evolution of biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems. A study of exceptionally preserved staphylinid fossils not only reveals the origin and the evolution of the family, but also helps to understand the complex relationships between insects and fungi and the insects in early ecosystems, revealing paleodiversity of higher fungi and the early history of social insects. Advanced imaging techniques and analytical methods can be helpful for understanding the morphological functions of Burmese amber insects, to further reveal the complex relationships between ancient insects and their surroundings, and eventually to reconstruct an ancient terrestrial forest ecosystem.

Plants and insects are the most diverse groups among macroscopic organisms on land today; their interactions play a pivotal role in the comprehension of the structure and the function of terrestrial ecosystems. The Paleozoic Era is a critical time-interval during the evolutionary history of both plants and insects. However, because of the lack of systematic investigations of the fossil records, the relationships between plants and insects and their co-evolution are still shrouded in mystery to date. Based on the systematic study of beetle's borings preserved in the late Permian (some 253 million-years ago) fossil conifer wood, this paper presents the earliest-known evidence for wood-boring beetles with changed diets during their developments by utilizing fungi, and living in a complicated ecological network. Statistical analysis indicates that the wood-boring beetles are probably the cause of a significant insect plague onto conifers during the late Permian. This study shows that the permineralized plant fossils are precious materials for a better understanding of the deeptime terrestrial ecosystems.

《Phanerozoic Brachiopod Genera of China》 was published in 2017. This book consists of two volumes with nine geochronological divisions from the Cambrian to Cretaceous. It provides a comprehensive revision and taxonomic update of all genera that are based on their type species from China established from 1883 to 2015. Altogether, there are 757 genera in 15 orders and nearly 200 families, of which 452 are treated as valid. Diagnoses, comparisons, assigned species, and temporal and spatial distributions of all genera are thoroughly reviewed, and faunal successions and palaeobiogeography of each geologic period are presented. Notes on macroevolution of the brachiopods of China, including the Cambrian explosion, the Great Ordovician biodiversification, the end-Ordovician, Frasnian-Famennian and end-Permian mass extinctions, the Middle Triassic radiation and the origination of some major groups of brachiopods are afforded in brief. Nearly all the relevant type specimens are illustrated in 125 plates. This book provides the most complete and consistent dataset of all brachiopod genera based on the Chinese materials. It will be of interest to palaeontologists, geologists and biologists who wish to learn the Chinese brachiopods and their bearings on biostratigraphy, biogeography and other related areas.