"One -click four companies"!They posted 4 natures in a day

On September 28, "Nature" published 4 papers in the same team in the same period in the same period. They all come from Zhu Min, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Zhu Min, a researcher at the Institute of Ancient vertebrates and Ancient Human Research Institute (hereinafter referred to as the ancient Human Research Institute).

"One -button and four companies" shocked the entire paleontology community. John Long, former chairman of the International Pelvlae Revolution and Professor of Flindis University in Australia, said that they rewritten almost all aspects of the early history of jaw vertebrate evolution.

Zhu Min is a little sincere in these statements. He prefers to say envy: "You have rebuilt a 'aquarium' in the early days of Zhi Li Ji." What is the "Aquarium"? When the research team tried to answer this question in the first paper, it had encountered three rounds of manuscripts of the reviewers of "Nature" and "Science" one after another.

Extraordinary conclusions must have extraordinary evidence. What exactly did Zhu Min's team pay for evidence of evidence?

Looking for "Ghost Branches"

In the past 10 years, Zhu Min has been dying of fossils like a group of "ghosts".

At the end of Optics (about 444 million years), the first large -scale biological cluster extinction occurred on the earth, and 85%of the species disappeared. But it took a stage for a Great Revolution in the evolution of fish, that is, the rise of jaws.

At present, 99.8%of vertebrates on the earth are maxillary. It can be seen that the emergence of jaw is an important leap in the history of life evolution.

"There is a jaw to unify the world because the maxillary not only improves the active feeding ability of vertebrates, but also promotes breathing and exercise ability to increase the shape quickly. Even flying into the blue sky. "Zhu You'an, an associate researcher at the Institute of Ancient Spine, said that the evolution of the entire vertebrate has greatly improved.

So how did such an important evolutionary incident happen?

Molecular biologists have long been studied for molecular clocks with jawb Isladians, and their co -ancestors were born in the late Okoto period (about 450 million years ago) before Zhi Li Ji. In other words, the most primitive jaws will not be later than this time. However, paleontologists all over the world found all the laws and disciplines, and found that there were very few jaw fossils.

Knowing existence, I couldn't find it. In the early days of Zhiji, the jaws became the "ghost branch" in the field of paleontology.

Zhu Min led the team to more than 200 places that may contain fish fossils in the Chinese Chi Liquan. Until 2019, they have discovered Guizhou Shimao Fossil Real Estate and Chongqing special buried fossil library (about 439 million to 436 million years ago) in Guizhou, Hunan, Chongqing and other places. "Cradle" and "Prehistoric Aquarium" can be seen again.

There are the oldest jaw teeth -the tooth rotation of Guizhou tooth fish. They have pushed the earliest fossil evidence with jaw teeth for 14 million years; shield fish named "Miracle Show Shanya", more The characteristics of skeletal characteristics provide direct evidence for the evolution of the skull of the jaw spine; the cartilage fish named "creep Shen's spiny fish" shows the ancestor of the shark "top helmets"; The spiny shark of the fish "fishing shark solves the problem of classified disputes between the early fish scales and spiny fossils of Zhiqi; although a kind of armor in the same period is no jaw, the researchers have found a pair on the fish for the first time. The continuous fin fold, which represents the prototype of an even fin or human limbs ...

Researcher Gai Zhiyu, a researcher at the Institute of Ancient Spine, believes: "The discovery and research of these fossils provides very important evidence to solve many unspeakable disputes and rebuild the early evolutionary history of jaw vertebrates."

"Strike is not ahead" is a normal state

To "restore" a "aquarium" in the early days of Zhili, how much fossils did the research team collect -precisely speaking, it is a rock wrapped in fossils?

The unit is calculated in tons. In 2019 alone, the team dug a few truck rocks at Shizhen Ping, Guizhou, weighing 4 tons, which was transported to the Natural History and Cultural Center Laboratory of Qujing Normal University. In the next year and a half, three full -time scientific research assistants plus two mobile players to start work.

They first soaked 4 tons of rocks into the vinegar pool arranged densely, rinsed with water in a few days, and then reduced the concentration for secondary soaking until the glue in the rock was completely corroded, and a pile of sand was left. Repeatedly sieved in this way, and finally obtained 300 kilograms that mixed with fossils.

The researchers divided these sand samples into a handful of small sips, put them one by one under the microscope to find the clues of micro -fossils. They finally found 23 Guizhou tooth fish tooth rotation, with an average length of only 2.5 mm, and they would miss it without any attention.

In this experience of "Sali Gold", people's patience and beliefs can be easily taken away. On countless nights, young scientific researchers couldn't wait to take out all the romantic imaginations of paleontology from the tired brain, and "punched and kicked."

"So, you must have a strong curiosity to do this job. You just want to know what is in the sand and how important they are, so as not to let them easily." Zhu You'an said.

With such emotions, Zhu Min has experienced too many times. Since 2008, he has carried carpet search for the three sets of shallow sea red floors developed from the bottom up from the bottom of China. For a full 10 years, although the fossils found in diversity have increased, there is no qualitative breakthrough in the age of fossils and integrity. Zhu Min admits that "stalemate is not ahead" is the norm of paleontologists in the wild.

Once the Spring Festival 2019, Zhu Min once again ran the wild with the team. He still did not give up, and decided to go back to Shiji, Guizhou. "As a result, I just reached the original old section, and I saw a new road next to me, so I went straight through a set of chronicle." No matter how many times I recalled, Zhu Min's eyes flashed.

This road seems to be a time tunnel, and finally tears the barrier to cover the history of jaw evolution in the early days of covering the discipline.

Zhu Min sent a researcher at Zhao Wenjin to lead the team. It took half a year to sample layer by layer in this newly discovered Pingpo surface, until they found the fossil rich set that had never been discovered in the past.

Looking for fossils, there is no "luck". Some are only in the correct scientific goal and the geological clues given by their predecessors.

The powerful "sniper" from the reviewer

It is difficult to find the process and the process of publication.

In July 2022, the fourth papers of Zhu Min's team have passed for almost 10 months. Zhu You'an finally received the fourth round of opinion from the reviewer. There is only one line above: The Revision is Completed.

The research team described in detail the earliest preserved cartilage fish -Shen's spiny fish in this paper, thereby confirming the problem of shark ancestors that have plagued the paleontology community for many years. It provides important information for the skull evolution of jaw vertebrates.

"The script we imagined should be like this: we found that such an important fossil specimen was analyzed. The editor should be" five -body investment ", the reviewer 'admiration", and finally urged us to quickly publish. " Essence

But in reality, this paper has been strongly "sniper" by the reviewer from the beginning.

"The text of the paper is only 4,000 words, but the first round of review opinions we responded to 8,000 words, the second round of 4000 words, and only 2000 words were written in the third round, so they were directly pushed into the fourth round." Zhu Youan told "China in China Journal of Science.

"In fact, almost all review opinions are raised around some small issues." He explained that, for example, there is a joint that has never been seen in other shields. structure.

The research team was prepared, and a new camera technology was introduced -full light shooting. This technique was originally used by forensic medicine for writing. "In the field of antiques imaging, it can present a three -dimensional structure of a fossil subtle part in all aspects to avoid the fossil appearance that the author wants to present in the subject of light."

What makes the research team the most unexpected is that the reviewer rarely picks up the analysis of the relationship between the article. Fortunately, Zhu Min, who has always paid attention to mathematical analysis, requires the team to analyze Bayesian analysis of more than 300 matrix of more than 300 species and nearly 700 characteristics, so as to ensure that the theoretical theory and system development framework proposed accordingly are credible.

In fact, this is not the only paper in this group of manuscripts that has undergone "triggers".

The first article of Zhu Min's team had encountered three rounds of manuscripts in "Nature" and "Science" due to some disputes in the final quarter. Due to the emergence of other articles in the same theme, the editorial department realized the important value of this series of fossil research, and then "fished" this paper.

"The research style and aesthetic preferences of the reviewer are unpredictable. They will always encounter some people who like to be harshly 'whipping'. But the result depends on whether we can withstand any tests. Being able to answer the reviewer seriously, even if the manuscript is very harsh, then the article has been published for decades or even hundreds of years. Our conclusions are resident and reliable. "Zhu Min said.

Zhu Min always relieves his students in this way. "The fossils of hundreds of millions of years ago were found, and this review time was even more sinking." (Journal of China)

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