Tao Deng
| Tao Deng | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 1963 Yibin, Sichuan Province, China |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| Fields | Vertebrate paleontology, evolution, biostratigraphy |
| Institutions | Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology |
| Alma mater | Peking University |
| Known for | Woolly rhinoceros |
Tao Deng (born June 1963) is a Chinese palaeontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, who has made important fossil discoveries on Cenozoic mammals. He is a professor of vertebrate palaeontology, Deputy Director of the Academic Committee, and Deputy Director of Key Laboratory of Evolutionary Systematics of Vertebrates at IVPP.
Tao Deng was born in Yibin, Sichuan Province. He studied at Peking University from where he obtained BS in 1984. He completed MS from Southwest Petroleum University in 1994. He obtained PhD from the Northwest University in 1997.
Tao Deng works at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology as a researcher and PhD supervisor. His specialization is in the study of mammalian fossils, biostratigraphy, and environmental changes during the Late Cenozoic. Deng currently assumes several positions, including Deputy Director for the Academic Committee of IVPP, and professor of palaeontology at the graduate school of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of two technical journals, Vertebrata Palasiatica and Evolution of Life.
Tao Deng has published more than 120 technical papers on palaeontology. He and his team had first major breakthrough in the Zanda Basin, from where they discovered fossil materials of Tibetan wooly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) on 22 August 2007. After painstaking excavation, they unearthed the skull, jaw bone and cervical vertebra of the adult wooly rhinoceros. An analysis through animal group comparison and paleomagnetic test indicated the fossil's geological age to be about 3.7 million years old and in the middle of the Pliocene. Their research eventually lead to indept knowledge of the dramatic rising of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its great impact to evolution of mammals with respect to climate changes. His team reported in 2011 that the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is actually the place of origin of the woolly rhinos during the Pliocene Ice Age, from where they evolved and spread out into other Asian and European regions.
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