Located at the cross-roads of intercontinental migrations of terrestrial mammals, Asia plays a crucial role in our understanding of mammalian evolution, zoogeography, and related questions about species first appearances in surrounding continents and their function as major markers of biochronology. This strategic geographic position is particularly apparent during the Neogene (~24-2 million years ago) when Asia was intermittently connected to Africa and North America, and widely connected to Europe. A well-established mammalian biostratigraphic framework in Asia will go a long way toward a global picture of mammalian evolution. Despite such importance and promise, however, Asia lags behind Europe and North America in the studies of terrestrial biostratigraphy and geochronology, and many unresolved issues become bottlenecks for detailed understanding of mammalian evolution elsewhere. This proposed roundtable workshop, to be held in Beijing in June 2009, represents the first large-scale gathering of world experts on Asian terrestrial mammal biostratigraphy and geochronology, including scientists with expertise in biostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, biochronology, zoogeography, paleoenvironment, as well as phylogenies of various groups of extinct mammals. In addition to offering the latest progress from individual regions and countries, the workshop will initiate in-depth discussions about the best methods to establish a mammalian biostratigraphic framework and will produce a book (Columbia University Press) that is the only comprehensive treatment of Asian terrestrial geochronology. This volume will represent the state of the art in construction of an Asian temporal framework, and will become a standard reference for many years to come, not only for students of mammalian biochronology in Asia, but also for the geoscience community in surrounding continents in Europe, Africa, and North America. The workshop will foster broader collaborations among specialists who are limited by a previously regional view, and lay the groundwork for establishing the first working network of vertebrate paleontologists across the study area. The workshop offers unprecedented opportunities for collaboration among geologists and paleontologists. More than half of the participants are expected to be from countries previously under-represented in international conferences, many of them also women (two from the United States, three from Russia, six from China, and one each from Turkey, Kazakhstan and Thailand). This project is co-funded by the Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology Program and the Office of International Science and Engineering (Turkey [TU] and Pakistan [PK]) of the National Science Foundation, USA.
Located at the cross-roads of intercontinental migrations of terrestrial mammals, Asia plays a crucial role in our understanding of mammalian evolution, zoogeography, and related questions about species first appearances in surrounding continents and their functions as major markers of biochronology. This strategic geographic position is particularly apparent during the Neogene (a period of time from approximately 24 to 2 million years ago) when Asia was intermittently connected to Africa and North America through land bridges, and was widely connected to Europe as it is today. A detailed documentation of sequences of fossil mammals preserved in successively layered rocks in all regions of Asia that produce continental sediments (known as mammalian biostratigraphy) is fundamental to a global picture of mammalian evolution. Such a record also helps to document the ancient environments in which these mammals lived, and constrains biotic events of the past. Despite such importance and promise, however, Asia lags behind Europe and North America in the studies of terrestrial biostratigraphy and geochronology, and many unresolved issues become bottlenecks for detailed understanding of mammalian evolution elsewhere. We saw the need to gather active field specialists who have first-hand knowledge of fossils and their provenance from all corners of Asia. We proposed a workshop to centralize knowledge of fossiliferous terrestrial deposits of the continent to explicitly discuss what is known of past life in Asia and how we know the ages of the assemblages. By understanding these data, conclusions on the scale and timing of biotic events through the Neogene in the terrestrial realm could be evaluated for validity and significance. We can place biochronology on a more precise, continental-scale basis. Our roundtable workshop on Neogene mammal stratigraphy and geochronology of Asia, held in the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing in June 2009, was the first such large-scale gathering of world experts on Asian terrestrial mammal biostratigraphy and geochronology, including scientists with expertise in biostratigraphy (studies of fossils within sediments), magnetostratigraphy (rock magnetism), biochronology (geologic time as told by its fossil content), zoogeography (distribution of animals), paleoenvironment, as well as genealogical relationships of various groups of extinct mammals. In addition to offering the latest progress from individual regions and countries, the workshop initiated in-depth discussions about the best methods to establish a mammalian biostratigraphic framework. We held three days of scientific communications and a field excursion to Hezheng Basin (and museum), Gansu Province. The workshop fostered broader collaborations among specialists who are limited by a previously regional view, and laid the groundwork for establishing the first working network of vertebrate paleontologists across the study areas. The workshop established unprecedented opportunities for collaboration among geologists and paleontologists. More than half of the participants are from countries previously under-represented in international conferences, many of them also women (two from the United States, six from China, two each from Thailand and Russia, and one each from Turkey and Mongolia), and many in early career. A major goal of this workshop was to produce a book, published by the Columbia University Press (CUP) that will be the first comprehensive treatment of Asian terrestrial geochronology. The PI and co-PI of this grant, Drs. Xiaoming Wang and Lawrence Flynn, are two of the three editors of the CUP volume. A total of 32 chapters by 95 internationally recognized authors are to be published. As of the writing of this report, the CUP book is being actively edited with a projected publishing date of Fall 2012. This volume will represent the state of the art in construction of an Asian temporal framework, and will become a standard reference for many years to come, not only for students of mammalian biochronology in Asia, but also for the geoscience community in surrounding continents in Europe, Africa, and North America.
