The rise of Chinese palaeobotany emphasizing the global context Qigao Sun
Abstract: The record of fossil plants in China can date back to the year 1086 during the Chinese Song Dynasty. The subject of palaeobotany was transplanted into China in the early 20th century. The rise of Chinese palaeobotany had direct connections with the world. Ting V.K. played a great role in the establishment of academic organisations and English journals for Chinese geological sciences, which also received support from foreign experts. Geological approach for palaeotanical studies was once popular in China because of practical use. Sze H.C. is usually called “the founder of Chinese palaeobotany”. Sze was a disciple of W. Gothan and made great contribution to the development of Chinese palaeobotany using geological approach. Hu Hsen-Hsu followed Asa Gray and thought that palaeobotany might be considered as a subject of plant sciences. Hu’s study on Metasequoia gives him a high reputation. The discovery of the living plants of Metasequoia is believed to be one of the most important discoveries in the 20th century. Hsü Jen was once majored in plant morphology and anatomy and obtained palaeobotanical training in Birbal Sahni’s lab in 1940’s. Hsü preferred to employ biological approach to work on fossil plants.
Introduction It is as early as in 1086 that Shen Kuo (1031–1093), who is one of the great Chinese ancient scientists from the Song Dynasty, recorded the occurrence of fossil plants of so-called bamboo shoots in his voluminous works, Dream Pool Essays (Meng Xi Bi Tan). The fossil locality is situated at Yan-shui-guan, 35 km southeast of Yen–chuan, Shaanxi Province, where it is very dry and cool at present. The fossil plants which Shen Kuo considered to be bamboo shoots are actually assigned to the Neoclamites fossils. This fossil record is believed to be over 400 years earlier than that of Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) (Deng, 1976; Li & Wang, 1999; Li, 2000). According to the ecological requirements and environment of bamboo shoots, Shen Kuo inferred that the climate in this fossil locality was warm and humid during the geological past providing an example of the geological principle that the present might be a key to the past. Shen Kuo’s clever idea is about 700 years earlier than that of James Hutton (1726–1797) and Charles Lyell (1797–1875) (Sun & Yang, 2000).
However, we might speculate, why such a brilliant Chinese civilization did not produce a scientific tradition. In fact, Chinese science and technology began to lag behind the occidental world from about the time of the Industrial Revolution. In the second half of the 19th century, the Chinese government of the Qing Dynasty was forced to initiate a series of open policies to foreign countries. Since the early 1870s lots of Chinese students were sent abroad to learn modern science and technology and most of them were eager to return to China to modernize the developing country after they finished their studies abroad. Although the 20th century saw a series of dramatic changes in recent Chinese history, modern science and technology was transplanted into China bit by bit. The fact is that the development of modern science and technology in China during the 20th century had a very difficult passage distorted both by international trends and by all sorts of domestic factors. In the first half of the 20th century China was always at war. A series of unexpectedly political changes happened to China in the second half of the last century and Chinese scientists were isolated for quite a long time.
This paper serves as a case study for the global perspective on the history of modern plant sciences in China. Thus the aims of this paper are to focus on the early history of Chinese palaeobotany in the first half of the 20th century, to introduce those who played a significant part in the rise of Chinese palaeobotany, to emphasize some intrinsic academic connections with the academic world community and to provide some critical clues to understanding the current situation of palaeobotanical studies in China.
Ting V.K. (Ding Wen–Jiang, 1887–1936) is a famous leader of the Chinese geological sciences. The initial development of Chinese palaeobotany benefits from the ambitious academic activities of Ting V.K. who was a politically influential organizer. Ting V.K. left China for Japan to study at the age of 15. Two years later he transferred to Britain. He graduated from Glasgow University in Scotland in 1911 with two degrees, one in geology and the other in zoology. He returned home to China and founded the Geological Institute in Beijing in 1913 and the Geological Survey of China in 1916. Ting V.K. started some professional journals, such as Bulletin of the Geological Survey of China in 1919, Bulletin of the Geological Society of China in 1922 (Ting, 1922a,b) and Palaeontologia Sinica (Series A) in 1922. These journals welcomed palaeobotanical papers. It is very important to note that most of the papers which appeared in these journals are in English. It seems reasonable that these journals are regarded as international journals at that time. The establishment of palaeobotanical organization and journals received great help from foreign colleagues, such as Swedish geologist Dr J. G. Andersson (1874–1960), and stimulated the rise of Chinese palaeobotany (Duan, 1990; Li, 2000).
Ting V.K. was very active in international co-operation for the development of Chinese palaeobotany, inviting foreign experts to work in China. For example, in 1914 Ting V.K. invited Professor J.G. Andersson to China to serve as a mining advisor for the Chinese government. Dr Andersson worked in China for 12 years (Halle, 1927; Duan, 1990) and collected many fossils in China. A total of 1,316 crates of specimens were transported to Sweden in 1923, among which there were 474 crates of fossil plants. Professor T.G. Halle was invited to work in China in 1916-1917 and trained Chinese Students such as Chow T.H. (Zhou Zan–Heng, 1893– 1967) (Halle, 1927; Duan, 1990). In 1923 Chow T.H. published a paper about some younger Mesozoic plants from Shantung (Chow, 1923) and he was considered to be the first Chinese expert to publish a palaeobotanical paper (Zhu, 1994; Li, 2000). In 1925 a group of American geologists and palaeontologists of the Third Asiatic Expedition were invited to China. American palaeobotanist R.W. Chaney and his colleagues gave talks about their research at the Beijing Geological Survey on Sep 23, 1925, which were organized by the Geological Society of China (Wang, 2002). Meanwhile, Chinese students were chosen and sent abroad for study. Chow T.H. was sent to Sweden to study palaeobotany in 1924 (Duan, 1990). After Chow returned to China he regrettably abandoned palaeobotanical studies although he was engaged in lots of academic organization (Li, 2000). Sze Hsing–Chien (Si Xing–Jian, 1901–1964) was sent to Germany to study palaeoboatny in 1928 (Zhang & Wang, 1994).
Development of geological approach on palaeobotany in China Palaeobotany is typically of an interdisciplinary nature. In many universities palaeobotany is interpreted as a geological subject and in others as a biological/geological subject (Darrah, 1939). In the first half of the 20th century, palaeobotany was mainly considered as a geological subject in China largely because palaeobotany was applicable to economic development and construction. Therefore the geological approach was normally taken in China until 1980s.
Sze Hsing-Chien is usually called “the founder of Chinese palaeobotany,” made a great contribution to the development of Chinese palaeobotany using the geological approach. Sze H.C. began his studies in Peking University in 1920. Later he became one of the students of Professor A.W. Grabau (1870–1946) and Lee H.T. (Li Si–Guang, 1889–1971). Professor Grabau, who was an American geologist and palaeontologist of the University of Columbia was invited to China in 1920 and he worked in the Geology Department of Peking University and at the Geological Survey in Beijing for about 26 years. Lee H.T. studied palaeontology in Birmingham University in Britain and got his M.Sc. degree in 1918. Influenced by these two professors, Sze became very interested in palaeontology and chose palaeobotany as his major. Sze H.C. graduated from the Geology Department of Peking University in 1926. In 1928 Sze went to Germany and studied palaeobotany at Berlin University with W. Gothan (1879–1954) who played an important role in Sze’s career. Sze got his Ph.D. in palaeobotany in 1931, the first Chinese palaeobotanist to do so (Zhang & Wang, 1994). After finishing his doctorate thesis, Sze went to study at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm and worked with Professor T.G. Halle (Li, 2000). In 1930 Sze, together with W. Gothan, attended the 5th International Botanical Congress held at Cambridge, UK and he made friends with lots of botanists and palaeobotanists from all over the world (Li, 2000). Sze was a prolific palaeobotanist in China. During the 1930s, Sze H.C. pioneered studies on fossil plants in China and he published a series of important papers in German or English. Before he returned to China in 1933, Sze co-authored 5 papers with W. Gothan. From 1930 to 1939 Sze completed 21 papers as sole author. Although the research conditions in China at the time were very difficult, Sze made strenuous efforts to work on fossil plants and achieved brilliant results, indicating that Chinese palaeobotanists were able to work independently on fossil plants. In the 1940s Sze published a total of 31 papers and taught young palaeobotanists, such as Li Xing–Xue (Lee Hsing–Hsueh, 1917--). Sze had a broad interest in fossil plants and his work was involved in many different research areas within palaeobotany. Therefore, Sze H.C. has been regarded as the founder of palaeobotany in China (Zhang & Wang, 1994; Li, 2000, 2001).
Although few Chinese botanists worked on fossil plants in the first half of the last century, Hu Hsen–Hsu (Hu Xian–Su, 1894–1968), who was a distinguished plant taxonomist in China, had a strong interest in palaeobotany. Hu thought that palaeobotany was an important subject within plant science. Hu’s ideas were closely related to his Berkley and Harvard education background in the USA. He studied Chinese Tertiary plants and those of the living fossil Metasequoia.
Hu not only advanced plant taxonomy, but also contributed to the overall development of palaeobotanical studies in China (Shi & Yang, 1998).
Hu was sent to the University of California at Berkley to study botany in 1912 and got his B. Sc. degree in 1916. He went to Harvard University to study plant taxonomy in 1923 and received his Ph.D. degree in 1925. Thus Hu had wide contact with the world botanists and palaeobotanists of his time. Hu was greatly influenced by the scientific ideas of Asa Gray (1810–1888), father of American botany, who pointed out the significance of the phyto–geographical relationship between eastern North America and eastern Asia (Gray, 1840, 1859, 1878; Boufford & Spongberg, 1983). Hu developed a deep interest both in recent plants and in fossil plants from China, which might provide very important evidence for the Tertiary history of plants in the Northern Hemisphere.
Hu founded the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing （formerly Fan Memorial Institute of Biology） in 1928, and the Botanical Society of China in 1933. He established several English journals in China for plant sciences and played a great role in the history of plant sciences in China (including the subject of palaeobotany) during the 20th century. Hu made great efforts to establish botanical organizations in China, which would provide potential for the further development of Chinese palaeobotany.
In the 1930s Hu conducted successful collaborative work with American palaeobotanist Professor R.W. Chaney with regard to Chinese Tertiary plants. Just before the Chinese-Japanese War, R.W. Chaney was invited to China for the second time. He went on a field trip to a very famous fossil locality, Shanwang locality in Linqu County, Shandong Province in June 1937 and collected many specimens of fossil plants. Some specimens were transported to the USA and kept in Berkley. Hu and Chaney (1940) co-worked on this Middle Miocene-aged Shanwang flora from Shandong and published an English monograph, which is undoubtedly the pioneering research on Tertiary floras in China (Sun et al., 2000, 2002).
Metasequoia Story During the 1940s Hu and his colleagues made a great contribution to the studies of recent and fossil Metasequoia (Hu, 1946; Hu & Cheng, 1948). The publication of the living fossil of Metasequoia was one of the greatest discoveries in the botanical and palaeobotanical community in the world and stimulated the development of Chinese palaeobotany in the last century. Miki (1941) established the genus Metasequoia based on the Pliocene fossils from Japan and thought that the genus was extinct. It is said that in October 1941 Professor Gan Tuo saw a big tree (about 30m high) under which there was a small temple named “Shui–Sha–Miao” in Mao–tao–chi in Wan Hsien, Sichuan Province (currently in Lichuan County, western Hubei Province). It is also said that Gan collected some specimens from the tree but without any further scientific results.
In 1943, Wang Zhan (1911—2000) collected specimens from the same big tree at Mao–tao–chi and considered them to be those of Glyptostrobus pensilis (Staunton) K. Koch (Shao et al., 2000; Ma, 2003). Cheng Wan–Chun (1904—1983) didn’t think that the tree was Glyptostrobus, but a new genus of conifer. In 1946 Xue Ji–Ru (1921—1999) also collected specimens of living Metasequoia from Mao–tao–chi. Cheng posted some specimens of the strange tree to Hu Hsen–Hsu. Sun
On May 9, 1946 Hu wrote to Professor R.W. Chaney and told him about the exciting discovery of the living fossil plant Metasequoia. On September 28, 1946 R.W. Chaney talked about the discovery at the annual meeting of Botanical Society of America. In December 1946 Hu published a paper, entitled “Notes on a Palaeogene species of Metasequoia in China,” and mentioned that he would discuss in another paper a living species of Metasequoia. Hu thought that the plant was the fossil genus Metasequoia established by S. Miki in 1941. At last, Hu and Cheng published their paper about Metasequoia glyptostobodies Hu et Cheng in 1948. The living species of the genus Metasequoia, is not extinct but still survives on the Earth. So far, plants of the living fossil Metasequoia have been introduced into many countries in the Northern Hemisphere. For the detailed information about the discovery of living Metasequoia, please refer to Ma’ s (2003) article.
Palaeobotany as a biological subject was not widespread in China during the last century, although the development of a biological approach on Chinese palaeobotany did begin in the 1940s. Hsü Jen (Xu Ren, 1910–1992) is a Chinese palaeobotanist, who preferred to use biological approach to work on fossil plants.
Hsü Jen’s education and career was greatly influenced by Chang C.Y. (Zhang Jing–Yue, 1895–1975) and Birbal Sahni (1891–1949). The former is a pioneer of plant morphology and anatomy in China who studied botany in the USA and worked in Europe (Compiling Committee of Chang Ching–Yue’s Works 1995). The latter is an Indian palaeobotanist, who studied palaeobotany in Britain and was the 5th Indian to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in Britain (Sitholey, 1950).
Hsü Jen entered Tsinghua University because he admired his uncle, Professor C.Y. Chang who was a Tsinghua graduate (1916–1920). Chang went to the USA to study botany in 1920 and he began his study with C.J. Chamberlain in the Botany Department of Chicago University in 1922. Chang was very interested in palaeobotany although he majored in botany. In 1924 he wrote an article about the latest discovery of coal balls in the United States and introduced it to the Chinese scientific community (Chang, 1924). Chang got his Ph.D. degree in 1925 and afterwards returned to China to engage in plant morphology and anatomy (Compiling Committee of Chang Ching–Yue’s Works, 1995). However Chang still worked on the anatomy of fossil wood (Chang, 1929). After Chang’s suggestion Hsü Jen went to Tsinghua University to study botany in 1929. Hsü learnt about fossil plants and had instilled in him a deep interest in palaeobotany during his sophomore (2nd) year. After Hsü graduated from Tsinghua University in 1933, he joined Peking University and worked as an assistant with Professor C.Y. Chang. Under his uncle’s guidance, he employed methods of plant morphology and anatomy to study fossil plants (Hsü, 2000). Chang had hoped that Hsü would study palaeobotany with J. Walton in the University of Glasgow, but Hsü failed to visit Britain because of financial difficulty during the Second World War. In 1944 Chang recommended that Hsü go to Lucknow University in India to study palaeobotany with Birbal Sahni (Chen et al., 1994). In 1946 Hsü got his Ph.D. degree from Lucknow University and returned to Peking University to teach palaeobotany. In 1948 Hsü was invited by Birbal Sahni a second time to India to participate in the foundation of Birbal Sahni’s Institute of Palaeobotany. Here Hsü met Thomas Harris in December 1949 when Harris came to the Institute as adviser for two months (Sitholey, 1953). In 1950 Hsü visited Sweden and attended the 7th International Botanical Congress in Stockholm where he met many palaeobotanists from all over the world. At the congress he gave two talks about “Devonian spores from Yunnann, China” and “New information on Homoxylon rajmahalense Sahni.” After his visit to Sweden, Hsü paid a short visit to Britain. At the end of the 1950 Lee H.T. invited Hsü to go back to serve New China. In the summer of 1952 Hsu returned to China and maintained a biological approach to research of fossil plants. Hsü’s efforts changed to some degree, the face of Chinese palaeobotany in the second half of the 20th century.
Summary Many subjects of modern science and technology were transplanted into China in the late 19th century. Geological sciences including the subject of palaeobotany are needed to serve such industries as coal, gas, oil in China. Focusing on palaeobotany, the information from China is of great importance because China has a large territorial area and contains abundant recent fossil plants in which foreign scientists are very interested. For example, the knowledge about the recent and fossil plants from China is crucial to the understanding of the phytogeographical relationship between eastern North America and eastern Asia. Since the early 1870s many Chinese students have traveled abroad to study modern science and technology thus establishing direct or indirect connections with the world scientific community. However, two factors hold Chinese scientific development back. Firstly China was always at war during the first half of the 20th century making scientific development difficult and secondly the Chinese culture differs greatly from that of foreign countries. Therefore the ideas of modern science and technology often find it very difficult to locate themselves in the cultural soils in China.
In the early 20th century Ting V.K. who was a graduate from the University of Glasgow in Scotland, made tireless efforts to establish academic organizations for the Chinese geological sciences. This is of great importance to the development of Chinese palaeobotany. The journals such as Bulletin of the Geological Survey of China, Bulletin of the Geological Society of China, Palaeontologia Sinica (Series A) serves as an important media for publishing palaeobotanical papers in English or German, which are easily understood by foreign colleagues. Otherwise, Chinese scientists would be isolated if their work was published in Chinese (Hass, 1988). The establishment of palaeobotanical organization and journals received great help from foreign colleagues, such as Swedish geologist Professor J.G. Andersson, and greatly promoted the rise of Chinese palaeobotany. In the first half of the 20th century, palaeobotany was mainly considered a geological subject largely because palaeobotany was of practical use to the needs of economic construction in China. So, a geological approach was popular. Sze H.C., usually called “the founder of Chinese palaeobotany,” who was a disciple of W. Gothan, made a great contribution to the development of Chinese palaeobotany using this geological approach.
As a distinguished plant taxonomist in China, Hu Hsen–Hsu had a strong interest in palaeobotany. Hu was a Harvard graduate, who accepted Asa Gray’s scientific ideas and conducted collaborative work with R.W. Chaney pertaining to the Chinese Tertiary plants. The discovery of the living plants of Metasequoia is always an interesting topic in the world circles of botany and palaeobotany. The studies on Metasequoia gave a high reputation to Hu, who thought that palaeobotany might be considered as a subject of plant sciences.
The development of a biological approach to Chinese palaeobotany began in the 1940s. As a botanist majored in plant morphology and anatomy, Hsü Jen obtained his palaebotanical training in Birbal Sahni’s lab in India in 1940s and preferred to employ a biological approach to work on fossil plants. After Hsü returned to China from India in 1952, Hsü worked in Sze’s lab in Nanjing for several years, In 1959 Hsü obtained support from Hu Hsen-Hsu and other colleagues in Beijing and founded a palaeobotanical lab of his own at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which changed the face of Chinese palaeobotany in the late 20th century. The author concludes that the history of Chinese palaeobotany in the first half of the 20th century has an important influence on the development of Chinese palaeobotany in the second half of the 20th century, which will be discussed in another paper.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Feng-Lin Li, Zhu-Sheng Xu, Hu Shi, Jin-Jian Liu, Jian Yang, Guo-Quan Wang, William J. Hass, Richard Wilding
and Imogen Poole for their kind help in various aspects.
Jason Hilton, Alan J Bowden
and anonymous referees are much acknowledged for their kind and appreciative assistance with improvement of manuscript. This work is partially supported by the grants from CAS Knowledge Innovative Program and National Natural Science Foundation of China. This article represents the publication of QGSUN’s study on history of Chinese plant sciences (No. HCPS-2003-01).
References The Chinese references are cited as their English titles were given in Chinese journals. Note that the words ‘Peking’and ‘Beijing’ , ‘Shantung’ and ‘Shandong’, etc refer to the same place, and that the names ‘Ting V. K.’ and ‘Ding W. J.’, ‘Sze C. H.’ and ‘Si X. J.’, etc refer to the same person. The spellings were changed in the early 1970s.
Boufford, D. E. & Spongberg, S. A. 1983. Eastern Asian-North American phytogeographical relationships----A history from the time of Linnacus to the twentieth century. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 70: 423-439
Chang, C. Y. 1924. New discovery of American palaeobotany. Science (in China), 9:809-810 (in Chinese)
Chang, C. Y. 1929. A new Xenoxylon from North China. Bulletin of Chinese Geological Society. 8(3):243-255
Chen, Y., Li, C. S. & Sun, X. J. 1994. A brief biography of Jen Hsü. In: Compiling Group of A Dictionary of Scientist Biographies (ed.) Biography of Modern Chinese Scientists (Vol.6), Science Press, Beijing 396-402 (in Chinese)
Chow, T. H. 1923.
A preliminary note on some younger Mesozoic plants from Shantung. Bulletin of the Geological Survey of China, 5(2): 81-141, 2pls. (in Chinese and English)
Compiling Committee of Chang Ching-Yue’s Works, 1995. Chang Ching-Yue’s Works. Peking University Press, Beijing, 1-319
(in Chinese and English)
Darrah, W. C. 1939. Textbook of Paleobotany. D. Appleton-Century Company, New York, 1-441
Deng, L. H. 1976. A review of the “bamboo shoot” fossils at Yenzhou recorded in “Dream Pool Essays” with notes on Shen Kuo’s contribution to the development of paleontology. Acta Palaeontologica Sinica, 15(1): 1-6 (in Chinese with English abstract)
Duan, S. Y. 1990. Ting V. J. and Chinese palaeobotany. In: Wang, H. Z. (Editor-in-Chief) The Early History of Geological Causes in China,
Peking University Press, Beijing, 214-224（in Chinese with English abstract）
Gray, A. 1840. Dr. Siebold, Flora Japonica (review). American Journal of Science and Arts, 39:175-176
Gray, A. 1859. Diagnostic characters of new species of phaenogamous plants, collected in Japan by Charles Wright, Botanist of the U. S. North Pacific Exploring Expedition. (Published by request of Captain John Rodgers, Commander of the Expedition.) With observations upon the relations of the Japanese flora to that of North America and of other parts of the Northern Temperate Zone. Memoir of American Academy of Arts and Science II. 6:377-452 [Reprinted, in part, in Sargent, C. S. Sargent (ed.) 1889. Scientific Papers of Asa Gray, 2:142-173]
Gray, A. 1878. Forest geography and archeology. American Journal
of Science III, 16:85-94, 183-196
Haas, W. J. 1988. Transplanting botany to China: The cross-cultural experience of Chen Huan-Yong.
Arnoldia, 48(2): 9-25
Halle, T. G. 1927. Palaeozoic plants from central Shansi. Palaeontologia Sinica (Series A), 2(1):1-316, pls.1-64
Hsü, J. 2000. Selected Works of Jen Hsü. Earthquake Publishing House, Beijing, 1-323
Hu, H. H. & Chaney, R. W. 1940. A Miocene Flora from Shantung Province, China. Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 507, 1-147
Hu, H. H. & Cheng, W. C. 1948. On the new family Metasequoiaceae and on Metasequoia glyptostroboides, a living species of the genus Metasequoia found in Szechuan and Hupeh, Bulletin of Fan Memorial Institute of Biology (New Series), 1(2): 153-163 (in English with Chinese abstract)
Hu, H. H. 1946. Notes on a Paleogene species of Metasequoia in China. Bulletin of the Geological Society of China, 16:105-107
Huang, J. Q., Pan, Y. T. & Xie, G. L., (editors) 1993. Selected Works of Ding Wenjiang (V. K. Ting). Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1-247 (in Chinese with English introduction)
Li, X. X. & Wang, J. 1999. Chinese palaeobotany. In: Wang, H. Z. (Editor-in-Chief) Fifty Years of Geological Sciences in China (1949-1999). Publishing House of China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 37-44 (in Chinese)
Li, X. X. 2000. General history and prospects of China’s palaeobotany: a century review, Acta Palaeontologica Sinica, 39 (Supp.): 1-13 (in English with Chinese abstract)
Li, X. X. 2001. Dearly cherish the memory of Professor Sze Hsing-Chien
(1901-1964): founder of Chinese palaeobotany. Acta Palaeontologica Sinica, 40(4):419-423 (in Chinese with English abstract)
Ma, J.S. 2003. The chronicles of the discovery of living Metasequoia—60-year retrospect. Plants, No.3: 37-40 (in Chinese)
Miki, S. 1941. On the change of flora in eastern Asia since Tertiary period (I): The clay or lignite beds flora in Japan with special reference to the Pinus trifolia beds in central Hondo. Japanese Journal of Botany, 11:237-303 pls.5
Shao, G. F., Liu, Q. J., Qian, H. et al. 2000. Zhan Wang (1911-2000). Taxon, 49:593-601
Shi, H. & Yang, F. 1998. In memory of
Professor Dr. Hsen-Hsu Hu. Plants. No.2:36-37 (in Chinese)
Sitholey, R. V. 1950. Paleobotany in India (VII)—Professor Birbal Sahni, FRS. Journal of the Indian Botanical Society, 14(1):1-5
Sitholey, R. V. 1953. Palaeobotany in India (VIII)—Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany. The Palaeobotanist, 2:111-112
Sun, Q. G. & Yang, J. 2000. Advances in studies on leaf physiognomy. Chinese Bulletin of Botany. 17 (special issue for IOPC-VI):102-108 (In Chinese with English abstract)
Sun, Q. G., Collinson, M. E., Li, C. S., et al. 2002. Quantitative reconstruction of palaeoclimate of the Middle Miocene aged Shanwang flora, eastern China. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 180(4):315-329
Sun, Q. G., Li, F. L., Liang, M. M. et al. 2000.
A bilingual bibliography of geological and palaeontological studies of Shanwang Formation, Shandong Province, China (1936--2000). Chinese Bulletin of Botany, 17 (special issue for IOPC-VI):272-288（In Chinese and English）
Ting, V. K. 1922a. Editorial: History of organization of the Geological Society of China. Bulletin of the Geological Society of China, 1(1-4):1-2
Ting, V. K. 1922b. The aims of the Geological Society of China. Bulletin of the Geological Society of China, 1(1-4): 8
Wang, M. L. (Editor-in-Chief) 2002. Chronicle of Events of 80th Anniversary of the Geological Society of China (1922-2002). Geological Publishing House, Beijing, 1-204 (in Chinese)
Zhang, S. Z. & Wang, Z. Q. 1994. A biography of Sze Hsing-Chien. In: Liu, D. S. (Editor-in-Chief) Brief Biographies of Chinese Experts of Science and Technology (Geological Volume—No.1). Hebei Education Publishing House, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Provinve, 337-346 (in Chinese)
Zhu, W. Q. 1994. History of Chinese palaeobotany. In: Botanical Society of China (BSC) (ed.) History of Chinese Botany. Science Press, Beijing, 292-307 (in Chinese)
----------------------------------------------------------------
本文曾刊发在History of Palaeobotany: Selected Essay书中：Sun Q.-G., 2005. The rise of Chinese palaeobotany emphasizing the global context.
In: Bowden, A.J., Burek, C.V. & Wilding, R. (eds) History of Palaeobotany: Selected Essay. London: Geological Society, Special Publications, 241:293-298
现重印时将文字稍作修改，并插入5张图片。
雷达卡
发表于 2011-1-9 10:06
提升卡
沉默卡
喧嚣卡
变色卡
抢沙发
显身卡
发表于 2013-11-9 14:40
