13 December 2018, Volume 36 Issue 23
    

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    Exclusive: Advances of Paleobiology
  • Study on Hamipterus and their 3D embryos
    WANG Xiaolin, JIANG Shunxing, CHEN Xin
    Science & Technology Review. 2018, 36(23): 11-19. https://doi.org/10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2018.23.002
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    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 found in Lingjing site in Henan Province and related research progress
    LI Zhanyang, WU Xiujie
    Science & Technology Review. 2018, 36(23): 20-25. https://doi.org/10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2018.23.003
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    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.
  • A 130 million-year-old fossil bird indicates decoupled evolution of pygostyle and tail fanning
    WANG Min, JINGMAI O'Connor, PAN Yanhong, ZHOU Zhonghe
    Science & Technology Review. 2018, 36(23): 26-29. https://doi.org/10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2018.23.004
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    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.
  • Rove beetles in Cretaceous Burmese amber and their significant ecological implications
    CAI Chenyang
    Science & Technology Review. 2018, 36(23): 30-35. https://doi.org/10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2018.23.005
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    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.
  • Paleozoic fossil records of plant-insect interaction: A window into the deep time terrestrial ecosystems
    FENG Zhuo
    Science & Technology Review. 2018, 36(23): 36-41. https://doi.org/10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2018.23.006
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    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.
  • Publication of《Phanerozoic Brachiopod Genera of China》
    QIAO Li, HUANG Bing
    Science & Technology Review. 2018, 36(23): 42-46. https://doi.org/10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2018.23.007
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    《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.
    • Reviews
  • Research progress of microorganism intensification technology for rural domestic sewage treatment
    WU Lingyan, CHEN Peizhen, ZHENG Xiangqun
    Science & Technology Review. 2018, 36(23): 47-56. https://doi.org/10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2018.23.008
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    At present, with the variety of China's rural living environment, the lack of environmental awareness for many farmers, and the poor infrastructure, the rural domestic sewage is continuously discharged to aggravate the environmental pollution in rural areas. This paper analyzes the present status of the domestic sewage treatment in rural areas at home and abroad, in the context of the application principles, the characteristics, and the commonly used methods of microbial enhancement technologies, including the high-efficiency degrading technology, the microbial immobilization technology, and the microbial inoculation technologies, which can effectively prevent the sludge from swelling with many advantages, such as the higher treatment efficiency, the resistance to stress, the resistance to toxicity and the impact resistance to load, as compared with the traditional sewage treatment methods. It is shown that the microbial enhancement technology is more suitable in the rural domestic wastewater, for the treatment of domestic sewage.
  • Research progress of lacustrine beach-bars
    WANG Tengfei, JIN Zhenkui, ALIYEVA Gunay, WANG Jinyi, LI Rui, YUAN Kun
    Science & Technology Review. 2018, 36(23): 57-67. https://doi.org/10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2018.23.009
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    Starting from the definition of the beach bar, this paper comprehensively reviews the latest progress of the beach bar research. According to the deposit types, the locations and the responses to the tidal action, the beach bars can be classified. According to the deposit types, the beach-bars can be divided into the carbonate beach-bars and the detrital beach-bars. According to the development locations, the beach-bars can be divided into the near shore beach-bars and the off shore beach-bars. According to the responses to the tidal actions, the beach-bars can be divided into the low tidal beach-bars, the middle tidal beach-bars and the high tidal beach-bars. In this paper, in view of the sedimentary characteristics of China's lacustrine beach bars, the sedimentary patterns of the beach bars are summarized and their internal microfacies are further divided. The development of the beach bars is controlled by the paleogeomorphology, the hydrodynamic conditions, the material source, the sedimentary cycle, etc. The controlling function of the paleogeomorphology is reflected in the configuration of the shoreline and the local topographic uplifts. The hydrodynamic condition controls the water flow in the development of the beach-bar, which is reflected in the wave actions of different strengths. The material source is the material foundation of the beach-bars and the beach-bars are better developed with abundant materials. The controlling effects of the sedimentary cycle on the beach bar is reflected in two aspects, the rise and fall of the datum level and its cycle. The paleo water depth and the paleoclimate control the development of the beach-bars, especially, the carbonate beach-bars.
  • Ordovician tectonic evolution and sedimentary response in the Helanshan-Zhuozishan Mountains and the peripheral regions, western North China: A review
    WANG Zhentao, WANG Xunlian
    Science & Technology Review. 2018, 36(23): 68-86. https://doi.org/10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2018.23.010
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    The early Paleozoic ocean-continent framework, the basin prototype and the tectonic setting of the Helanshan-Zhuozishan Mountains, the western North China Craton (NCC) and its tectonic affinity remain as controversial issues, and the hot topics in the international geological community. In recent years, with the accumulation of new data such as the petrogeochemistry, the paleomagnetism, the zircon geochemistry and the chronology, some new lines of evidence and hypotheses were put forward, raising these scientific problems to a new level, but without consensus yet being reached. This paper reviews a series of latest progresses, and comments on some crucial basic geological problems, and puts forward suggestions for future research focusing on scientific issues.
    • Articles
  • Correction of sweep coefficient for the porous carbonate reservoirs in the Middle East with consideration of start-up pressure gradient in low permeability points
    LIU Guangwei, LI Changyong, PI Jian, LIU Fan, TANG Shasha
    Science & Technology Review. 2018, 36(23): 87-92. https://doi.org/10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2018.23.011
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    Based on the characteristics of the large scope permeability distribution, and the joint action of the seepage law for both low permeability and medium to high permeability, aiming at the problem of the recovery restriction for low permeability points caused by the start-up pressure, the influence of the start-up pressure gradient of low permeability points on the sweep coefficient is studied by the numerical simulations. Also, by coupling the start-up pressure gradient and the displacement pressure distribution for the low permeability point, the correction method for the sweep efficiency is established. Result shows that the lower the reservoir permeability and the higher the permeability variation, the greater the influence of the start-up pressure of the low permeability points on the sweep coefficient. Taking the M oil reservoir in the Middle East as an example, the application analysis is carried out. When the reservoir permeability is between 5~35×10-3 μm2 and the permeability variation is between 0.6~0.8, the range of the correction coefficient is about 0.75~0.99, which in turn can correct the calculation of the sweep efficiency in the industry standards.
  • A large scale social networking community detection prototype system based on Spark
    YE Xiaorong, SHAO Qing
    Science & Technology Review. 2018, 36(23): 93-101. https://doi.org/10.3981/j.issn.1000-7857.2018.23.012
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    In order to effectively explore the user information in large-scale social networks and improve the understanding of the relationship between users, a community detection prototype system based on Spark is designed and developed. The ActiveMQ is used to acquire a large amount of the user data, taking advantage of the naive Bayesian algorithm provided by Spark-based MLlib to clean the user data, and using the PageRank algorithm provided by Spark-based GraphX and the Z-Score algorithm provided by MLlib to calculate the user ranking. In the prototype system, the LPA algorithm is finally used and optimized, to group the users of similar features and close ties into the same community quickly, as a foundation for further analysis and utilization of the community user data.

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