Prof Zhu Min examines fossils of the world's oldest known coelacnanth, which came from Buchan, in Victoria.
Image: John Long
Source: Museum Victoria
Leading international Palaeontologist visits Museum Victoria.
Prof Zhu Min is currently working at Museum Victoria as a visiting scientist, undertaking collaborative research on the early evolution of fishes with John Long and his students.
Having obtained his PhD in palaeontology in 1990, Prof Zhu then worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Natural History Museum in Paris (1993-95) and as a Humboldt Fellow in the Museum of Natural Sciences in Berlin (1996-97). In 1999 he was appointed as the youngest Director of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology, at age 33.
His ground-breaking research on the early evolution of vertebrates has been based on his team's many discoveries from 400 million year old deposits in Yunnan, China, where many of the 'missing links', the vital stages in the evolution of fishes leading to the first land animals (tetrapods), have been identified.
His work has produced seven papers in Nature as well as several substantial monographs detailing the structure of the world's most primitive fishes.
His main interest in working at Museum Victoria is to undertake joint research using one of the world's finest CT scanners, based at the ANU in Canberra, which John and his group are currently using to analyse the anatomy of the oldest jawed vertebrates.