China reveals top 10 paleontological breakthroughs of 2021

NANJING, March 10 (Xinhua) -- The Paleontological Society of China (PSC) has announced China's top 10 paleontological breakthroughs of 2021, releasing the list on Thursday in Nanjing, in east China's Jiangsu Province.

The 10 breakthroughs were made in a variety of fields, including vertebrate paleontology, paleoanthropology, geochemistry and paleobotany, said Wang Yongdong, vice president of the PSC.

Among them was research on the dynamic genetic history of the human population in East Asia over the past 40,000 years. This project revealed the selection mechanism of unique adaptive genes by analyzing the human genomes between 40,000 to 300 years ago.

The PSC, founded in 1929, is one of China's earliest academic organizations dealing with the natural sciences. Its annual top 10 list of paleontological breakthroughs in China was started in 2017.