Yongxiang Li

Late Oligocene-Early Miocene magnetochronology of the mammalian faunas in the Lanzhou Basin-environmental changes in the NE margin of the Tibetan Plateau.

A large number of terrestrial mammalian fossils were reported in the well-exposed Paleogene and Neogene fluvio-lacustrine strata in Western China. Their accurate ages are crucial to understand the mammalian and environmental evolution associated with the step-wise uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. At present their ages are surprisingly poorly constrained. Here, we present a high-resolution magnetostratigraphic dating of the Late Oligocene–Early Miocene mammal assemblages from a 233-m thick fluvio-lacustrine section in the Lanzhou Basin located at the northeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau, China. The results suggest that the section spans from the polarity subchron C6Cn.2r to C5En, i.e. ranging from ca 23 to 18 Ma. This magnetochronology provides considerably more robust ages for three associated land mammalian faunal assemblages. Updated ages end the debate on existing ambiguous and distinctly different magnetostratigraphic correlations for those Late Oligocene–Early Miocene assemblages. The new ages now enable precise correlation of these faunas to the European Land Mammal and North American Land Mammal Ages. The faunal assemblages further suggest a mixed setting of woodlands and grasslands associated with a humid environment in the Lanzhou Basin during the Late Oligocene–Early Miocene, in contrast to its modern poor vegetation cover and arid environment.

Mammalian Evolution in Asia Linked to Climate Changes

The environmental significances of climate change as reflected in the evolution of mammalian fauna, including humans ,in China during the Cenozoic are reviewed in this chapter. The mammal distributions and evolution of mammalian zoogeographic provinces in China during the Cenozoic are suggested to be significantly affected by the Asian monsoon development and the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. The evolutionary history of these mammals is linked to different habitat scenarios in central China related to the development of the Asian monsoon-arid environment system. Some mammals are sensitive to the Asian summer and winter monsoon variations. Early humans are quite adapted to the wide environmental changes in East Asia during the Quaternary.

New fossils of the Early Pleistocene Equus huanghoensis (Equidae, Perissodactyla) from Nihewan in Hebei province of China

This paper describes new fossils of Equus huanghoensis from an Early Pleistocene bed in Nihewan, Hebei Province, which confirms the classification of E. huanghoensis by Chinese researchers. The new fossils include a relatively complete male skull and mandible with all upper and lower dentition, a broken female skull with fragment of mandible and a broken Mc III of Equus sp. The fossils were collected from the Yangshuizhan site of Nihewan. The age of the formation is about 1.6 Ma. The new materials verify some classification characteristics based on teeth published in previous descriptions. These characteristics include large teeth size, short protocone, and tilted protoloph and metaloph. We have added to these characteristics of large skull size, a developed protuberantia supramagna, pentagonal nuchal side, weak Pli cabaline, simple enamel plications; a series of new characteristics strikingly different from the other Equus horses. The broken Mc III is similar to Equus qingyangensis from Qingyang, Gansu

Intensity dependence suppression and enhancement of four-wave mixing in a micrometric thin vapour

We theoretically investigate dressed-four-wave mixing (dressed-FWM) spectroscopy of rubidium atoms in a micrometric thin vapour. It is found that Dike-narrowing type Autler–Townes (AT) spectroscopy with high resolution can be achieved in a reverse Y-type four-level atomic system due to the phase-conjugated configuration of laser beams and the transient effects of atom–wall collision in the thin vapour. We also show that controllable suppression and enhancement of the dressed-FWM signal due to the evolution of atomic coherence can be obtained by selecting different coupling field intensities at the proper detuning of the probe and the coupling fields. This control of FWM processes can be interpreted by dressed state analysis and probably used in the design of optical switch and the enhancement of FWM processes for frequency conversion.