Workshop on Neogene Mammalian Chronology of Asia, June 2009 in Beijing, China

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Neogene Mammalian Chronology of AsiaA Roundtable Workshop on Neogene Terrestrial Mammalian Faunas of Asia: Correlation and Biogeographic Relationships with Greater Holarctica and AfricaPI, Xiaoming Wang; co-PI, Lawrence J. FlynnAbstractLocated at the cross-roads of intercontinental migrations of terrestrial mammals, Asia plays a crucial role in our understanding of mammalian evolution, zoogeography, and related questions about species first appearances in surrounding continents and their function as major markers of biochronology. This strategic geographic position is particularly apparent during the Neogene (~24-2 million years ago) when Asia was intermittently connected to Africa and North America, and widely connected to Europe. A well-established mammalian biostratigraphic framework in Asia will go a long way toward a global picture of mammalian evolution. Despite such importance and promise, however, Asia lags behind Europe and North America in the studies of terrestrial biostratigraphy and geochronology, and many unresolved issues become bottlenecks for detailed understanding of mammalian evolution elsewhere. This proposed roundtable workshop, to be held in Beijing in June 2009, represents the first large-scale gathering of world experts on Asian terrestrial mammal biostratigraphy and geochronology, including scientists with expertise in biostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, biochronology, zoogeography, paleoenvironment, as well as phylogenies of various groups of extinct mammals. In addition to offering the latest progress from individual regions and countries, the workshop will initiate in-depth discussions about the best methods to establish a mammalian biostratigraphic framework and will produce a book (Columbia University Press) that is the only comprehensive treatment of Asian terrestrial geochronology. This volume will represent the state of the art in construction of an Asian temporal framework, and will become a standard reference for many years to come, not only for students of mammalian biochronology in Asia, but also for the geoscience community in surrounding continents in Europe, Africa, and North America. The workshop will foster broader collaborations among specialists who are limited by a previously regional view, and lay the groundwork for establishing the first working network of vertebrate paleontologists across the study area. The workshop offers unprecedented opportunities for collaboration among geologists and paleontologists. More than half of the participants are expected to be from countries previously under-represented in international conferences, many of them also women (two from the United States, three from Russia, six from China, and one each from Turkey, Kazakhstan and Thailand). This project is co-funded by the Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology Program and the Office of International Science and Engineering (Turkey [TU] and Pakistan [PK]) of the National Science Foundation, USA.