Right: Chang Mee-Mann and the author at the SVP annual meeting in Austin, October 18, 2007. Mee-Mann’s role in promoting excellence in Chinese paleontology deserves wider recognition. Photo by author.

It is great to see a large Chinese delegation here in Austin at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology’s annual meeting. There’s clearly a lot of good science going on in China and I would venture to say that the spirit of cooperation and collaboration between Chinese scientists and scientists from other countries has never been better.

It is a little known story outside dinosaur circles that much of this success should be credited to veteran paleontologist Chang Mee-Mann, who is also attending this year. When Ji Qiang, Xu Xing, Zhou Zhonghe (all National Geographic Society grantees) and other Chinese scientists hit the paleontology news scene with feathered dinosaur and bird fossils in the late 1990s, the stage had already been set by Mee-Mann for a new generation of Chinese paleontologists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paeloanthropology (IVPP) to play on the world stage as equals with their foreign colleagues.

As far back as 1987, when she participated in the Sino-Canadian Dinosaur Project with Phil Currie, Dale Russell, and others, Mee-Mann was convinced that Chinese scientists deserved center stage when it came to Chinese fossil material. Since then, she has pushed for scientific excellence at the IVPP and thus paved the way for a new generation of now-internationally recognized Chinese scientists. But while she herself has not been in the media spotlight, she was by no means quiet or inactive. She was Director of the IVPP and became a member of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences. And she did all this while continuing her own research on the evolution of fish (for which she received a National Geographic grant in 2000). I can say that National Geographic members have benefited greatly from the efforts of Chang Mee-Mann through the many stories we’ve been able to print on Chinese fossil treasures. Thank you, Mee-Mann.

Comments