"This is a great encouragement for female scientists in China," Zhang Yiman, who won the 2018 World Outstanding Women Scientist Award, told Xinhua. "The proportion of female scientists in China continues to rise, but more top talents are needed."

Zhang is the fifth Chinese female scientist to receive the honor, following Li Fanghua (2003), Professor Yip Yuru (2004), Professor Ren Yonghua (2011), and Professor Xie Yi (2015) of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC).

The leading woman of paleontology

Zhang is not only an outstanding female scientist, but also the first person in the world of paleontology to receive this honor.

Zhang's colleague Zhou Zhonghe, director of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua that the award is the first to be given to a paleontologist, which is of profound significance to the development of paleontology in China and even the field of paleontology around the world.

Zhang Yiman was one of the first geological college students in New China, and was later selected to study paleontology at Moscow University. She accepted the suggestion of Mr. Wu Xianwen, an ichthyologist, and chose to study ancient fishes, thus stepping into the "lost world" of life evolution - the origin process of terrestrial vertebrates.

The evolution of fish into terrestrial vertebrates on land is an important event in the history of biological evolution.

It is related to the origin of all terrestrial vertebrates, which has been studied by paleontologists for hundreds of years. Determining how fish evolved their inner nostrils and learned to breathe in the air is a key step in understanding the process.

In the early 1980s, Zhang Mi-man, who was studying at the Swedish National Museum of Natural History, studied the structure of Yangi in Qujing, Yunnan Province, through complex and rigorous fossil reduction technology,

and boldly pointed out that they have no inner nostrils. Her discovery overturned the traditional "three holes" theory and shook the world of ancient life. Zhang's view gradually gained academic acceptance after she discovered the fossil of Khenyi in Qujing, Yunnan Province, China, which proved the "drift" theory of inner nostril formation.

These thick-boned fish bear witness to the collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian plate, the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau, and the age-old process of aridity. Zhang also published his research results on middle eel of Mengi in Nature (2006) and PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014).

He has studied the only record of lampreys in freshwater sediments in the world so far, and recorded for the first time the larva and larva characteristics of fossil lampreys.

It also shows that the unique three-stage life history of modern lampreys was formed as early as 125 million years ago in the late Early Cretaceous and remains today.

For his academic contributions, Zhang was elected as a Foreign Fellow of the British Linnean Society, a foreign academician of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Chicago in 2011 and the Gilder Graduate School of the American Museum of Natural History in 2015, and the highest award in the international vertebrate Paleontology community - Romel Simpson Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016.

In addition to her academic achievements in paleontology, Zhang has also used her research results to provide important information for the determination of bottom layer correlation, stratigraphic age and sedimentary environment in China's oil exploration work.

At the beginning of the development of Daqing oilfield, experts from all walks of life gathered together to judge the distribution of underground oil according to their own professional knowledge.

At that time, many people believed that the oil-bearing strata should be in the Early Cretaceous period, 150 million years ago, and oil exploration should be concentrated in the corresponding strata.

But Zhang Yiman does not think so, she based on the fossil samples in the strata, combined with the study of the evolution of ancient fish in East Asia, she proposed that the most oil-rich strata should be in the late Cretaceous era about 100 million years ago.

Her views provide a scientific basis for geologists to search for oil deposits. Since then, with the first oil from Daqing oilfield bubbling out of the ground, Zhang's view has also been proved and caused a sensation.

During the development of Shengli Oilfield, Zhang Yiman found that the ocean had covered the area twice, so the geological age of oil production would be different from that of ordinary oil fields, which also provided conditions for the smooth development of Shengli oilfield.

In recent years, Zhang, who is already famous in the field of paleontology, has devoted himself to the research of Cenozoic cyprinid fish fossils, which has received little attention, in order to promote the research process in related fields in China.

"If we don't do this one, China will not be able to catch up," she said, explaining that the Cenozoic fish fossils reflect the changes in the earth in recent years, and can be well integrated with molecular biology in the future, which may produce new big discoveries.