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Xu Xing: The palaeontologist who's named the most dinosaurs
Over the past two centuries, one of the biggest revelations about dinosaurs was that they eventually evolved into birds.
Professor Xu Xing is a Chinese palaeontologist who has been at the forefront of this research, pioneering ways to show how scaly reptilian-like animals became the feathered flyers we know today.
We sat down with Xu to talk about his circuitous route into palaeontology, and what he wants to find next.
Wearing a blue mac and shirt, Xu Xing doesn’t attract a lot of attention. He’s a modest, softly-spoken man in his fifties - you might be forgiven for walking past him without giving a second glance.
But make no mistake, because within the world of dinosaurs Xu Xing is a globally important figure.
In fact, Xu has described so many new species of dinosaur that he’s actually lost track. He reckons the number is somewhere around 80. ‘Yeah, I think that's the correct number,’ muses Xu.
They range from the fearsome nine-metre-long tyrannosaur Yutyrannus huali, to the miniature Xixianykus zhangi, which was smaller than a cat. It also includes the dinosaur with the shortest name ever, Yi qi, which was a bat-like animal with a thin membrane stretched between its fingers.
This makes Xu the living person who has named the greatest number of new dinosaurs in the world, and he shows no sign of stopping.
‘I would say naming the new species is the most exciting part of my research,’ says Xu, before adding rather mischievously, ‘you're like a god deciding which species are present or not.’
‘That's still the most exciting part.’
But Xu’s work hasn’t stopped there. His focus on the transition from dinosaurs to birds - examining how they evolved feathers, beaks and wings - has radically influenced the field of palaeontology. His insights have provided new perspectives, opened up entire new areas of study and fostered countless international collaborations.
Xu really is one of the most prolific palaeontologists ever to live. And yet, he had a very unassuming route into the subject.
Xu has named at least 80 new species including significant fossils such as Microraptor, a feathered dinosaur with four wings. ©Natursports/Shutterstock
An unlikely start
Palaeontology was not Xu’s first choice of career. When he was younger, he wanted to be an economist, but due to the government at the time was assigned to study dinosaurs instead.
‘It was totally an accident,’ says Xu. ‘I'd never heard about palaeontology, or even the word ‘dinosaur’ before I went to the college.’
‘I was assigned to the subject. When I got the message, I asked my high school teacher what palaeontology was, and he also had no idea.’
For the next few years Xu persevered but the subject never really sparked an interest. It was at this point that he met Paul Barrett and Paul Upchurch, two British PhD students. They had travelled to China in 1995 to attend a conference and take the rare opportunity to visit the country’s dinosaur collections.
‘We were very excited to be in China because at that time, very few of our colleagues had managed to go,’ explains Professor Paul Barrett, who is now a dinosaur researcher at the Natural History Museum. ‘As we talked to some of our more senior Chinese colleagues about how we might get to some of the more remote parts of China, they insisted that we should take a Chinese student with us.’
‘The person that they suggested was Xu Xing.’
Xu credits meeting Paul Barrett and Paul Upchurch (pictured, left) with having helped him to see the excitement in studying dinosaurs. Image courtesy of Paul Barrett.
For the next few weeks, the three of them travelled around southern China by public transport, staying in the same hotels and working together in the collections they visited. It was witnessing how the two visitors from the UK worked with the fossils and their excitement at what they were seeing that, in part, made things click into place for Xu.
But after completing his Master’s project on a type of herbivorous dinosaur named Psittacosaurus, things took a bit of a downturn.
‘At that time, it was a really difficult for the whole country, including for science,’ explains Xu. ‘There was no funding and no fossils.’
Then Xu got lucky. It was at around this time that some extraordinary fossils were unearthed in China.
Xu and Paul Barrett (pictured, right) have been friends and colleagues for the past 30 years. Image courtesy of Paul Barrett.
Birds from dinosaurs
Since at least the 1860s there were suspicions that dinosaurs had evolved into birds, but over 130 years later some still questioned this theory. Palaeontologists knew of some bird-like dinosaurs, but it was very difficult to prove that they were the direct ancestors to the feathered animals still alive today.
That was until in the 1990s when dinosaurs with feathers were discovered in China. Fossils of animals with claws and pointy teeth but that were also covered in an undeniable coat of fluffy feathers were preserved in fine detail.
The unveiling of these fossils was a ‘slam-dunk’ moment that finally proved the link between dinosaurs and birds. And right there at this nexus was a young Xu, looking for a PhD project to get started on.
He began working on many of these new fossils, including one nicknamed ‘fuzzy raptor’. Xu would go on to describe this as the new species Sinornithosaurus and threw himself into the study of these ground-breaking specimens.
‘I got a chance to study some fossils collected by my former advisor, Zhao Xijin, and got involved in this feathered dinosaur project,’ recalls Xu. ‘That really changed my life.’
‘I got the opportunities to study these amazing fossils and name a lot of new species.’
Xu has been critical in pushing our understanding of how feathers evolved from scales. ©Andreas Wolochow/Shutterstock
By the time he graduated from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Beijing, he already had a handful of Nature papers to his name. He had also cemented himself as the world’s leading expert on feathered dinosaurs.
‘It's partly luck, in that he's been in the right place at the right time to be involved in these amazing discoveries,’ says Paul. ‘But Xu has an astounding work rate and he’s taken those discoveries and used them in really clever, innovative ways to illustrate the many small steps that occurred in the transformation of a bog-standard meat-eating dinosaur into a feathered, flying bird.’
This has included being one of the first people to look at the embryology of feather development in birds and then compare that to the dinosaur fossil record. This has allowed researchers to see, for example, how it is possible to turn the development of scales into feathers.
China’s preeminent palaeontologist
Caught in the fall out of volcanic ash millions of years ago, the bones, soft tissue and feathers of these bird-like dinosaurs in China are exquisitely preserved. It was this sensational preservation of feathered dinosaurs that really put the country on the palaeontological map.
‘When we talk about North American and European dinosaurs, we often talk about giant animals,’ says Xu. ‘But when we talk about Chinese dinosaurs, we’re talking about feathery dinosaurs – small, cute animals.’
‘It's all related to this transition from dinosaurs to birds.’
It is this work that has really seen Xu rise to become China’s preeminent dinosaur researcher. Not only has he named many new species of dinosaurs, Paul also suspects that Xu is the dinosaur palaeontologist who has published the highest number of scientific papers in the prestigious journal Nature.
Yet, according to Paul, Xu has remained a humble - if hard working - friend.
Xu shows no sign if slowing down, and has vowed to unearth the largest dinosaur ever in China. Image courtesy of Xu Xing.
‘I can honestly say that knowing Xu has been nothing but a pleasure,’ says Paul. ‘He's very generous with his time and with his ideas. He is a very relaxed and self-effacing person.’
‘He goes out of his way to help with the training of students and with helping set up large collaborative projects, giving access to things that he's been working on.’
‘He’s certainly one of the most influential dinosaur people of all time, even at this point.’
Despite his prolific career to date, there is still so much more for Xu to work on. The thing that motivates him, however, is much simpler: excitement.
‘In a few years I’ll be 60, but when I look at fossils I feel like a young person again,’ says Xu. ‘It is really exciting.’
But that understated modesty doesn’t stop Xu from having a playful sense of humour.
‘Many years ago, I was interviewed by some reporters, and they asked: “If you wanted to have a big discovery next year, what do you want to find?” And I said, “oh, I want to find a Jurassic tyrannosaur.”’
‘The next year I found Guanlong, this Jurassic tyrannosaur. And I think that’s happened at least twice or three times,’ laughs Xu.
So what is he going to discover next year, then?
‘My next expectation is that like [the Argentinian palaeontologist] Diego Pol, I want to find the largest dinosaur that ever lived on the Earth. I want to find that new fossil in China,’ he says with a rogue smile.
Whether his prediction of finding the largest dinosaur ever comes true or not, according to Paul one thing is certain: Xu Xing’s place in history books is already written.
