About Acta Micropalaeontologica Sinica

Acta Micropalaeontologica Sinica

Acta Micropalaeontologica Sinica is a Chinese journal of micropalaeontology published in Nanjing, Jiangsu, with ISSN 1000-0674. Its Chinese title is Weiti Gushengwu Xuebao — literally, the journal of micro-palaeontology — and it has been in publication since 1984. Bibliographic records name Science Press as its publisher, and the journal is one of the four peer-reviewed academic journals published by the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Its subject is the fossil record at microscopic scale: microfossils, palynology and the biostratigraphy built upon them — the tiny shells, spores, pollen and organic-walled remains by which much of Earth's sedimentary history is dated and correlated.

Nanjing and the Institute Behind the Journal

The journal's home institution gives it an unusual weight. The Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences — NIGPAS — was founded in 1951, with roots in the former Palaeontological Section of the Institute of Geology of Academia Sinica and in the Palaeontological Group of the Geological Survey of China, and its founding figure was the distinguished geologist and palaeontologist Li Siguang, known in English as J. S. Lee. In the institute's own description, it conducts basic and applied research in palaeontology and stratigraphy and is the only Chinese institution that specialises in these fields.

A specialist journal published by the country's sole specialist institute in its discipline is, in effect, a national journal of record. The institute's current research focuses — the origin and evolution of life on Earth, evolutionary palaeontology, biostratigraphy and chronostratigraphy, systematic palaeontology, palaeoecology, palaeogeography and palaeoclimatology, molecular palaeobiology, geobiology, the coevolution of life and environment, and applied palaeontology and stratigraphy — map closely onto the journal's pages, and its contributors are drawn from the same Chinese micropalaeontological community the institute trains through its master's, doctoral and postdoctoral programmes in palaeontology, stratigraphy and geobiology.

One of Four Institute Journals

NIGPAS states that it publishes four peer-reviewed academic journals: Acta Palaeontologica Sinica, Acta Micropalaeontologica Sinica, the Journal of Stratigraphy and Palaeoworld. The four divide the institute's territory between them. Acta Palaeontologica Sinica is the general palaeontology journal; the Journal of Stratigraphy carries stratigraphy as such; Palaeoworld is the family's international-facing English title; and Acta Micropalaeontologica Sinica is the specialist member, reserved for the microscopic fossil record.

That division of labour explains the journal's identity. Micropalaeontology is a discipline of its own — its specimens are extracted from rock by dissolution, sieving and picking under the microscope, its taxonomy rests on shell microstructure and wall composition, and its principal use is the zonation and correlation of sedimentary strata. A dedicated journal lets that community publish taxonomic descriptions, assemblage studies and zonation schemes at the length and with the illustration they require, without competing for space with macrofossil palaeontology.

Bibliographic Record and Publication History

The journal's ISSN is 1000-0674, its publisher is recorded as Science Press, and its Chinese title, Weiti Gushengwu Xuebao, is the form under which it is cited in much of the international literature — references in Western journals routinely give the title in the bracketed form Weiti Gushengwu Xuebao [= Acta Micropalaeontologica Sinica]. The journal has been in publication since 1984, and its own volume sequence corroborates a continuous run from that date: a paper on holothurian sclerites from the Taiyuan Formation appeared in volume 2, issue 4, in 1985; studies in fusulinid foraminifera appeared in volume 10 in 1993; and work on the age of the Hongguleleng Formation appeared in volume 13 — an unbroken annual volume sequence reaching back to a 1984 first volume.

For a directory, those details fix the journal's identity precisely: a Nanjing-published, Science Press journal of micropalaeontology, running since 1984, cited internationally under both its Latin and its Chinese titles, and distinct from every other Acta title in Chinese earth science.

The Microfossil Groups

The journal's contents, as visible through the international literature that cites it, span the main groups of micropalaeontology. Foraminifera — the shell-building protists whose assemblages date marine strata — appear in work such as the 1993 study of the test wall structure of Quasifusulina and its significance for the classification and evolution of the fusulinid foraminifera, a group of central importance for Carboniferous and Permian stratigraphy in China. Chitinozoans, the organic-walled marine microfossils of the early Palaeozoic, appear in studies of Llanvirn and Llandeillian chitinozoan biostratigraphy in the central Yangtze platform and of Early Ordovician chitinozoans from formations in Hubei and Chongqing.

Other groups fill out the field: holothurian sclerites — the microscopic skeletal elements of sea cucumbers — were reported from the Upper Carboniferous Taiyuan Formation of Henan in the journal's second volume; acritarchs and spores, the organic-walled microfossils of the Precambrian and Palaeozoic, are part of the same research tradition the journal serves; and conodonts, radiolarians and ostracods belong to the wider Chinese micropalaeontological literature in which the journal's zonation work is cited and used. Each group has its own specialists, preparation methods and stratigraphic uses, and the journal is their shared Chinese platform.

Palynology

Palynology — the study of fossil spores and pollen — is one of the journal's documented core subjects. Palynomorphs survive in rocks where calcareous fossils dissolve, they are abundant in terrestrial and marginal-marine deposits that other microfossils rarely reach, and their assemblages are used both to date strata and to reconstruct past vegetation and climate. In China, with its vast continental basins and its long record of coal-bearing and petroleum-bearing sequences, palynology has always had an applied as well as an academic importance, and a Nanjing journal of micropalaeontology is one of its natural homes.

The connection runs through the institute itself: palaeobotany is one of the founding branches of palaeontology at Nanjing, and the study of fossil spores and pollen is the microscopic extension of that tradition into rocks from which no leaf or wood fossil will ever be recovered. Papers in this strand link the journal to questions of plant evolution, basin history and palaeoclimate as well as to straightforward dating.

Biostratigraphy: The Journal's Working Purpose

If one purpose unifies the journal's contents, it is biostratigraphy — the ordering and correlation of rock strata by their fossil contents. The cited record shows the pattern clearly: chitinozoan zonations for Ordovician successions of the Yangtze platform, fusulinid studies bearing on the classification of the very foraminifera used to zone Carboniferous and Permian limestones, and assemblage work used to fix the age of contested formations such as the Hongguleleng Formation of Xinjiang. These are papers written to be used: a zonation published in Acta Micropalaeontologica Sinica becomes a tool with which geologists across China date boreholes, correlate outcrops and build the stratigraphic framework on which geological mapping and resource exploration rest.

That practical function is the reason micropalaeontology sustains its own journals worldwide. Microfossils are abundant in the small samples that drilling produces, they evolve quickly enough to divide geological time finely, and several groups together can date a succession from multiple independent directions. China's sedimentary record — from the Palaeozoic marine platforms of the Yangtze region to the continental basins of the north-west — gives its micropalaeontologists an unmatched natural laboratory, and this journal is where much of that dating work has been published since 1984.

Distinguishing the Title

The journal must be kept distinct from its sister and from similar titles. It is not Acta Palaeontologica Sinica, the institute's general palaeontology journal, whose province is the whole fossil record including the macrofossils that are this journal's counterpart rather than its subject. It is not Palaeoworld, the institute's English-language journal, nor the Journal of Stratigraphy. Its marks are the title Acta Micropalaeontologica Sinica, the Chinese title Weiti Gushengwu Xuebao, ISSN 1000-0674, publication in Nanjing by Science Press, its place among the four journals of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, and its continuous run since 1984.

Why the Journal Matters

Most of the fossil record is microscopic, and most stratigraphy is done with microfossils. For more than four decades Acta Micropalaeontologica Sinica has been China's specialist journal for that record — for foraminifera, chitinozoans, palynomorphs and their fellow microfossils, and for the biostratigraphy that turns them into geological time. Published from the one Chinese institute devoted to palaeontology and stratigraphy, it is included in this directory as a leading Chinese magazine and academic journal of micropalaeontology.