Ge Yong

Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Exploring the utilisation of flour in ancient Xinjiang is crucial for understanding the use of different grain crops as staple comestibles. In this study, multiple analyses were applied to identify five flour food remnants discovered in the Wupu Cemetery (1100–400 BCE) in Hami, Xinjiang. Results show that two of the samples were comprised of broomc...

Angiosperms became the dominant plant group in early to middle Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystems, coincident with the timing of the earliest pulse of bird diversification. While living birds and angiosperms exhibit strong interactions across pollination/nectivory, seed dispersal/frugivory, and folivory, documentation of the evolutionary origins and...

The selection of a non‐shattering phenotype is a pivotal change in the process of rice domestication. However, current research is heavily restricted by the preservation conditions of macro‐plant remains in early and middle Neolithic sites, as very limited well‐preserved rice spikelet bases could be retrieved. We present a non‐destructive method ba...

Angiosperms became the dominant plant group in early to middle Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystems, coincident with the timing of the earliest pulse of bird diversification. While birds and angiosperms exhibit strong interactions across pollination/nectivory, seed dispersal/frugivory, and folivory, documentation of the evolutionary origins and constr...

The Taihu Lake region is an important area where China’s rice agriculture originated and where early Chinese civilisation formed. Knowing how this ecologically sensitive area’s Neolithic residents adapted to environmental changes and utilised natural resources is key to understanding the origins of their agricultural practices and civilisation. Foc...

Tibetan Plateau is the “third pole” of Earth and significantly influences the world’s ecosystems. However, limited work on phytolith analysis has been done due to its harsh environment, and no study on phytolith production and morphotypes in modern plants on the Tibetan Plateau has been carried out yet. In this study, we investigated 73 modern plan...

Neolithic rice remains were recovered from a mixed rice–millet farming area in China outside the original centers of rice farming. Whether the rice remains were the result of local cultivation or obtained through trade remains unclear. Rice paddy fields are direct evidence of local cultivation. In this study, phytolith samples from the Zhangwangzhu...

Rice has been one of the most important plant resources both in modern and ancient times. Research on the origin and domestication of rice is an important topic in archaeobotany; phytolith analysis has played a crucial role improving understanding of these issues. In this study, we collected 30 specimens including 28 Oryza (rice) species, 1 Leersia...

Ferns are important plants both to ecosystems and humans, while the organic tissues of ferns might be hard to find due to the taphonomical condition. Thus, phytoliths in ferns might provide helpful information while other proxies were absent. In this study, we surveyed the production and morphology of phytoliths in 25 fern species belonging to 15 f...

High-resolution proxy-based paleoenvironmental records derived from peatlands provide important insights into climate changes over centennial to millennial timescales. In this study, we present a composite climatic index (CCI) for the Hani peatland from northeastern China, based on an innovative combination of pollen-spore, phytolith, and grain siz...

Broad-leaved trees are widely distributed from tropical to temperate zones in China, reference collections of phytoliths from these taxa are crucial for the precise reconstruction of paleoenvironments and the study of early plant resource exploitation. However, not much has been published on the phytoliths produced by modern broad-leaved trees. In...

The ∼74 ka Toba super-eruption was the largest known explosive volcanic event of the past 2.5 million years and has been held responsible for presumed dramatic global cooling and large-scale hominin extinction. The hypothesis that the Toba super-eruption resulted in human extinction outside of tropical Africa has been cited as a mechanism to suppor...

Phytoliths in the inflorescence of Poaceae plants can be of high taxonomic value in some archaeological contexts and provide insight into plant taxonomy and crop domestication processes. In this study, phytoliths in every inflorescence bract of 38 common Panicoideae weeds and minor crops in China were studied. Based on dissection of the inflorescen...

In the last decade, our understanding of rice domestication has improved by new archaeological findings using advanced analytical techniques such as morphological and morphometric analyses on rice grains, spikelet bases and phytoliths, and ancient DNA analysis on rice remains. Previous studies have considered the size of rice bulliform phytoliths a...

Phytolith study is a new branch of micropaleontology with an increasingly important role in geology, archaeology, and plant taxonomy. Phytoliths have several advantages considering their characteristics of small particle size, high production, wide distribution, anti-decomposition, in situ deposition, distinctive morphologies, and element sequestra...

Echinochloa was an important prehistoric food crop of early agriculture in Asia. Macro-remains can be used to identify Echinochloa. However, when few macro-remains are available, phytolith analysis can be performed. In this study, we examined the phytolith morphology of the glumes, lemmas, and paleas from the inflorescence bracts of nine Echinochlo...

Rice (Oryza sativa) is regarded as the only grass that was selected for cultivation and eventual domestication in the Yangtze basin of China. Although both macro-fossils and micro-fossils of rice have been recovered from the Early Neolithic site of Shangshan, dating to more than 10,000 years before present (BP), we report evidence of phytolith and...

Bulliform phytoliths play an important role in researching rice origins as they can be used to distinguish between wild and domesticated rice. Rice bulliform phytoliths are characterized by numerous small shallow fish-scale decorations on the lateral side. Previous studies have shown that domesticated rice has a larger number of these decorations t...

Research on response of phytolith assembles in Phragmites communis to two treatments is a new idea for studying global change. As P. communis is an important dominant species in the Songnen Grassland and widely distributed in sampling area and produce abundant phytoliths. P. communis was selected as the material and target to find a link between th...

Phytoliths were extracted from 14 woody plants collected on the northern slope of the Changbai Mountain, including 10 broad-leaved species and 4 conifers. A total of 14 morphotypes of phytoliths were identified, including 3 types first examined in this study. Phytoliths in broad-leaved species were mostly silicified epidermal cells, cell walls, and...

The Changbai Mountains, located in the temperate monsoon climate zone of East Asia, is an ideal location for the research on timberline response to global changes. In this study, the topsoils were collected from different vertical vegetation zones on the northern slope of the Changbai Mountains, Northeast China in August 2009, and phytoliths in the...

Measuring the response of terrestrial ecosystems to elevated CO2 concentrations is very important for understanding the effects of global change. In this study, OTC (open top chambers) were used to simulate elevated CO2 concentrations in the Songnen Grassland. As well, phytoliths in Leymus chinensis were extracted to study the relationships between...

Using infrared radiator and applying nitrogen on Leymus chinensis community on Songnen grassland to simulate global warming and nitrogen deposition, phytolith was extracted from L. chinensis, the morphology and content of phytolith were analyzed. Phytolith in L. chinensis were classified into 4 main classes and 12 subclasses, as well as some small...

The characteristics of phytoliths in Leymus chinensis leaves from five different pH-value habitats from Songnen Plain in China were analyzed to reveal their environmental implications and possible use for quantitative reconstruction of the paleoenvironment. The phytoliths in leaves of L. chinensis from the five habitats showed a non-linear correlat...