FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 12, 2002

CONTACT: Jette Englund

Office of University Relations

(908) 737-NEWS

E-mail: jenglund@kean.edu

Kean University Professor to Teach at Prestigious Chinese University

UNION, N.J. – Dr. Xiaobo Yu, professor of biological science and paleontology at Kean University, whose remarkable fossil-fish discoveries in China have caught the attention of international press, has been invited to teach an interdisciplinary course in evolutionary-developmental biology at Beijing University for the fall semester. The position is highly competitive. Only scholars from well-known universities or from programs with recognized strength and status are invited, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education.

The invitation was extended by Dr. Mao Pan, dean of the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Beijing University. Dr. Livingston Alexander, provost/vice president for academic affairs at Kean, enthusiastically supported Yu's application for a semester-long sabbatical. “I take great pleasure and pride in granting Dr. Yu leave to teach at Beijing University, an institution that is considered on par with Yale and Harvard and one of the top-ranking institutions of higher learning in China,” Alexander said. “On behalf of the entire Kean University community, I wish Dr. Yu a great learning and research experience that he can share with us when he returns.”

"I am very excited to have the opportunity to teach at Beijing University, one of the two top universities in China,” Yu said. “Teaching this new interdisciplinary course on evolutionary-developmental biology will enrich the theoretical framework of my own research and provide a more integrative perspective for my teaching at Kean. I feel very privileged to be invited to teach in China this fall, and I am very grateful to Kean University for its full support."

“The course will involve both graduate and undergraduate students in paleontology and evolutionary biology and integrates recent developments in these fields,” Pan said. “The interdisciplinary approach is also new, and Dr. Yu and I expect that success in teaching this new course will lead to further collaborative development, such as a new textbook or a collection of journal articles bearing the names of both universities to be published in the future.”

An article co-authored by Yu titled A Primitive Sarcopterygian Fish with an Eyestalk appeared in the March 2001 issue of the internationally acclaimed science journal Nature, and both the local and international press found Yu's catch intriguing. Achoania, the fossil fish Yu discovered, is much more primitive than expected and could force a reassessment of the evolution of prehistoric fishes, which scientists believe are common ancestors of all land vertebrates, including humans, Yu explained. “From a layperson's perspective, Achoania suggests that we are more primitive than we used to believe,” he said.

Yu and his fellow paleontologists had been on the trail of the fossil since the early 1980s, when they were on a dig in the Yunnan Province of China. But it took Yu and his colleagues, Drs. Per Ahlberg of the Natural History Museum in London and Min Zhu of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing, almost two decades to compare this find to existing research and to establish with scientific certainty that Achoania is unique.