After eating a fish, put the fish bones back to their original appearance; after eating a chicken, let the chicken bones return to their original appearance.
This wave of operations is so cool! Recently, I received more than 2 million likes on Douyin. The people who can restore the bones of these animals are Lu Jing, an associate researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and her friends.
loves
for no reason. Lu Jing studies ancient fish. This is an extremely unpopular field. There may be dozens of people who really study this direction in the world.
is not popular in the field, but Lu Jing thinks it is cool!
When she was in university, Lu Jing studied biology at Sichuan Normal University. Among so many creatures, she had a soft spot for vertebrates.
"The bones of vertebrates are so interesting and amazing!" Lu Jing feels that bones not only show the beauty of vertebrates, but studying them can reveal the evolutionary history of vertebrates and even humans. Because the vertebrates are the closest to humans, and even humans themselves are a kind of vertebrates.
In 2003, Lu Jing came to Beijing from Sichuan, and went to the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences for postgraduate and doctoral studies, and then stayed at the institute until now.
's earliest interest in vertebrates came from movies and comics. Watching "Indiana Jones", watching "Dragon Ball", "There is an archeology professor in the movie, who often goes out to explore, but can also encounter skulls and various wild creatures, so cool!"
has still been in her office so far. A collection of comics about Latimer fish. But when she first watched "Dragon Ball", she didn't know what this fish was, she thought it was just an ordinary fish. Until she was in graduate school, she knew that there was a fish like Latimai. "It turns out that the fish Xiao Wukong ate at the time was the finfish I studied." Lu Jing said that it has arms and legs, which are like arms and legs. There are really bones in the fins. Unlike other fish, it is this form of bone that finally evolved into human limbs, arms and legs.
In fact, one of Lu Jing's jobs is to search for human shadows from this "friend" 400 million years ago, Latimer.
Many ancient fishes studied by Lu Jing have become extinct. Like the scutella, spinyfish, and claw-toothed fish that existed at that time, many ancient fish are now invisible. Most of the fish (radial fish) we can see now were a very inconspicuous branch 400 million years ago.
The fish of 400 million years ago, how their bodies changed and what characteristics they acquired, were able to move from the water to land step by step. In this long process, what changes have occurred, and what has it to do with human beings. This is all Lu Jing wants to know. And she firmly believes that each of these subtle changes may have a profound impact on today.
Inspiration from a fish
In May 2019, Lu Jing was invited to participate in the review of a popular science video published by Popular Science Press. It was a short video, a popular science animation story about lungfish, but in this short tens of seconds, a knowledge point was explained. "It's very interesting, it makes people interested."
Because of this animation, Lu Jing also watched several short videos made by the publisher in other directions. "Usually I never look at anything else. Basically, it's good to be able to look at what is related to my profession." Researchers like Lu Jing are obsessed with literature and materials, and have very little contact with the Internet. "It is the consensus of scientists to keep oneself away from the hustle and bustle of the Internet." The freshness of
's short videos inspired her, "This kind of science popularization is fresh and fun, can I also use short videos to do it? Some ancient biology science.” So she decided to cooperate with the popular science publishing house to make some short videos on ancient biology themes.
happened to be a colleague preparing a popular science article on how scientists eat fish heads. He suggested that the fish heads should be eaten and put together. Lu Jing was inspired, "Then let's go to eat fish together, and then put the fish bones together!" At the dinner of
that day, Lu Jing took a few colleagues and doctoral students together to eat fish in the office. Head puffs.
is easy to eat, I want to fight it backIt's difficult. Fish skulls are the most numerous of all vertebrates, and their structure is also the most complex. For those who have studied bones and anatomy, although they are not unfamiliar with every piece of fish bones, putting these bones back into a three-dimensional appearance is a different matter.
fish has a lot of very small bone fragments, and the score is about, especially how the gill bones under the operculum are connected to the operculum. It is really difficult to figure out these positional relationships in a short period of time, which parts are free and which parts are tight.
Lu Jing and they were especially careful when they ate, for fear of destroying some cartilage. Because the normal specimens are not eaten, they are usually boiled in water or let the breadworms eat the meat, but this takes a long time and they are too late.
Although Yi Gao was bold, "Unexpectedly, I picked one of the hardest for myself." Lu Jing couldn't laugh or cry. The fish bones after eating were very oily. They used dish soap for a long time, and they were short of time. They used a hair dryer to dry them after washing. They even thought of using absolute alcohol to quickly dehydrate. In order to fit everyone's daily life, Lu Jing and the others chose things that they had contact with in their daily lives. Even the support for fish bones was just a few pieces of disposable chopsticks. "It's very down-to-earth, it's really cool to make it like this."
thought it would take more than an hour to finish it, but Lu Jing stood there for more than three hours, her waist was exhausted, and she hadn't finished it all. . Several times, because of the location of a small bone, the big guy had to analyze and study for a long time. Seeing how unable to put together the last few bones, Lu Jing wondered if she had to give up? But give up at this time, all previous efforts have been abandoned, and this cannot be done. She gritted her teeth, straightened her back, and took a sigh of relief. The last few small bones were actually assembled within 10 minutes, and the skull of a fat fish appeared clearly.
started eating fish from around 5 o'clock, and it was already more than 10 o'clock in the night when the fish bones were finished. Everyone has been busy for more than 5 hours. "I succeeded at the last moment when I wanted to give up. This is also the most meaningful place." What
made Lu Jing most unexpected is that after the video of the first fathead fish was released, he gained more than 100 on Douyin. Thousands of likes. "This is the language of the video, which is really beyond the reach of traditional science popularization."
Lu Jing said that when I first filmed the video, I really wanted to give it a try. I didn't expect the feedback to be so good.
The charm of paleontology
bones have been put back to their original appearance, what's next? Lu Jing said that the next step is real science time. For example, a fat-headed fish, who is the ancestor of this fish, is really connected with the ancient creatures themselves.
In fact, in daily life, many people are very interested in fossils, especially many children like to go to museums, like dinosaurs, and want to know what the original ancient creatures looked like. Lu Jing believes that although this is an unpopular and ungrounded field, many people are interested in it. This is also her original intention to do science popularization.
"I don't want to make people feel that fossils are far away from us because of the unpopularity of this subject. In fact, it is not. We should let everyone know more except for dinosaurs." Lu Jing said that all fossils are actually evidence of biological evolution. How did the creatures of the past change to the present.
Before making short videos, Lu Jing also did popular science, such as going to a museum to give lectures to college students, or publishing her own popular science articles. But this kind of audience is very narrow. Once there are more professional terms, many people will not understand it at all. The effect of such popular science work is always almost meaningless.
But short videos are different, especially in this era of rapid development of traffic, which is more suitable for everyone's rhythm and way of life. When Lu Jing chooses, he also takes into account the animals that are common to everyone, which is more down-to-earth.
is a commonplace chicken, usually few people have the opportunity to carefully observe its bones. But in fact, the bones of chickens and dinosaurs are very similar. Both chickens, ducks and geese are birds, and the direct ancestors of birds are a kind of small carnivorous dinosaurs closely related to Tyrannosaurus Rex . Therefore, the bones of birds and dinosaurs have many similarities and connections. It can be said that birds have inherited the skeletal characteristics of Tyrannosaurus to a large extent. "We showed the bones of chickens and found out the similarities between chickens and dinosaurs. It is also to tell everyone that today's animals are evolved from ancient animals, so the fossils are not far away from us."
Lu JingShe said that after the video of fighting chicken bones was released, there was a netizen Aite who asked her to talk about how dinosaurs evolved into chickens, and she felt very happy.
In just a few months, Lu Jing's vibrato "Ms. Lu with Bones" has attracted nearly 400,000 fans, and everyone is looking forward to Mr. Lu's updated video. Nowadays, watching netizens' messages and answering netizens' questions have become Lu Jing's amateur pleasure.
Some time ago, a netizen sent a photo to Lu Jing and asked what it was. Lu Jing saw that this was a specimen that looked like an ichthyosaur. She deliberately ran to consult a colleague who studied marine reptiles. The colleague was stunned at first glance, and quickly asked where he found it, but when Lu Jing said it was Guangzhou, he laughed. Because ichthyosaurs are unlikely to be found in Guangzhou.
It turned out that this specimen is very similar to an ichthyosaur, but it is really carved. The vertebral body of this ichthyosaur is still like a fish, but the ichthyosaur that lived more than 100 million years ago is actually different. It has its own unique vertebral body, which can only be identified by people doing research.
In order to let netizens understand thoroughly, Lu Jing also went to the herbarium to take pictures of real ichthyosaur specimens and compare different places so that netizens could see at a glance. Another netizen at
sent a photo taken in Xinjiang. In the picture, the bone of a vertebrate is connected to a half of a spine. Netizens said that they saw holes like eyes, thinking that the head of an animal was connected to the spine. Many netizens left messages saying that they looked like the skull of a python.
Lu Jing researched and found that this netizen had reversed the front and back of the bones. The netizens thought it was the head part, which was actually the pelvis of the animal. Lu Jing judged that it was a kind of mammal. She went to the herbarium and compared several different mammals, including pigs, sheep, cows, and horses. Finally, she concluded that the picture was the skeleton of a wild boar.
took pictures of the specimen and made a video. Lu Jing quickly posted it on the Douyin account to explain it clearly to netizens. "It's a particularly good popular science point, just to pass on knowledge." Lu Jing said that this is actually the case in life. I thought it was not easy to encounter fossils, but in fact bones and fossils are very common.
According to Lu Jing, doing scientific research is work, and doing science popularization can only use her rest time. She said that her life can be summed up as everything related to paleontology. "When I first became interested, I liked it without knowing it, but now that I like it deeper and deeper, and I know what I want to do more and more."
counts down one day, Lu Jing has to work 14 hours . In addition to traditional projects such as scientific research papers and field excavations, she also collaborated with foreign universities to design a VR program to try to use artificial intelligence technology to process data and help reconstruct and repair specimens.
Lu Jing said that she especially hopes to make paleontology cool through cutting-edge technology. "Our work is really not just what everyone imagines is holding a magnifying glass and a microscope to look at ancient stones there. In fact, we have really made a lot of new attempts." She will find opportunities to show real work scenes in the future. Let more people know what the discipline of paleontology really does, and what methods are used by those who study this discipline to reveal the mysteries of ancient creatures.
"The past has never been past. It casts your present and helps you see the future." This is a sentence that Lu Jing likes very much, just like the ancient creatures she thinks: fossils are not far away from the present, and the present creatures, They all retain the shadows of past creatures.
Source: Beijing Daily Client | Reporter Luo Qianwen
Editor: Cai Wenqing
Process Editor: Wu Yue
