Yang Zhongjian

Yang Zhongjian (June 1, 1897-January 15, 1979), courtesy name (Zi) Keqiang (克强), also known as C.C. (Chung Chien) Young, was one of China's foremost paleontologists. He has been called the 'Father of Chinese vertebrate paleontology'. He was born in Huaxian, Shaanxi province.

Yang graduated from the Geological department of Peking University in 1923 and in 1927 received his doctorate at Munich University in Germany. In 1928 he worked for the Cenozoic Research Laboratory of the Geological Survey of China and took charge of the excavation at Peking Man Site in Zhoukoudian.

He had professorial posts at the Geological Survey, Peking University, and Northwest University of Xi'an. Yang's scientific work was instrumental in the creation of China's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, which houses one of the most important collections in the world. He was director of both the IVPP and the Beijing Natural History Museum.

He supervised the collection and research of dinosaurs in China from 1933 into the 1970s. He presided over some of the most important fossil discoveries in history, such as the prosauropods Lufengosaurus and Yunnanosaurus, the Ornithopod Tsintaosaurus, and the gigantic sauropod Mamenchisaurus, as well as China's first stegosaur Chialingosaurus.

His cremated remains are buried at Zhoukoudian beside those of his colleagues Pei Wenzhong and Jia Lanpo.