ISELV in China

What is ISELV?, I hear you ask. ISELV stands for the International Symposium of Early and Lower Vertebrates, which basically means “a meeting for fish nerds” (especially fossil fish from the Palaeozoic). The 15th episode of this meeting was held this month in China.

The first ISELV was held in 1967 in Stockholm and has been held on average every 4 (or fewer) years since then. I’ve been lucky enough to attend this wonderful meeting previously in 2015 (Melbourne, Australia) and 2017 (Chęciny, Poland).

This year the “fishy fossil” global community descended upon Yunnan Provence in southern China to spend a week at Qujing Normal University. The week was meticulously arranged by our colleagues from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthroplogy (IVPP) in Beijing.

We enjoyed four full days of fascinating talks, and were treated to a field day in the middle of the conference out at some of the local Silurian and Devonian sites yielding vertebrate remains around Qujing. First we visited the Xiaoxiang site close to Dongpo village. Several high profile discoveries in recent years have been excavated from this site, including so-called “maxillae” placoderms (Entelognathus, Qilinyu), and some of the earliest complete bony fishes (Guiyu, Megamastax, Sparalepis). In addition to our excitement about hammering out some fossils at these famous sites, we saw some spectacular countryside scenery too.

The second stop saw us visit the Xitun Fauna site which is younger than the Dongpo site, this time we were up in the Devonian “Age of Fishes”. This site has revealed some very important lobe-finned fishes, in particular Youngolepis and Diabolepis, which were found in the 1980s, and more recently forms such as Psarolepis, Achoania, Styloichthys and Meemannia.

I spoke on the third day on “New information on the pharynx of the Devonian tetrapodomorph fish, Gogonasus, revealed by synchrotron and neutron tomography.” I compared scans of a new specimen of a complete Gogonasus scanned using conventional micro CT, synchrotron and neutron scanning while also describing the anatomy of the gill arches of this fish. The arches appear to be somewhat reduced which could be an indication of increased reliance on air-breathing in this relative of the early tetrapods.

Dr Lu Jing and Dr Alice Clement at ISELV 2019 in Qujing, China. 

Thanks to Min Zhu (chairman), Wen-jin Zhao (vice-chair) and the rest of the organising committee for putting on such a wonderful meeting! Also, I must acknowledge and give many thanks to eLife and Flinders University Impact Seed Funding which allowed me to travel to China and to attend this meeting.