The International Conference on Early Life and the Environment commenced at Taibai Campus, Northwest University on February 17. The opening ceremony was attended by CAS academicians including ZHANG Guowei, ZHAI Mingguo, SHU Degan, ZHOU Zhonghe, PENG Jianbing, LI Xianhua, ZHAO Guochun, ZHU Min, XIE Shucheng, and ZHANG Shuichang, along with over 130 experts and scholars from 10 countries including China, the United States, Russia, Germany, and South Korea.
Centered around the theme of “Tree of Life”, the conference focused on Earth’s habitability evolution from the Archaean Eon to Cambrian Period and early life-environment interactions. Featuring three main topics—the formation of “Tree of Life”, Earth’s habitability, and co-evolution of life and environment, the event invited 30 distinguished experts to deliver academic presentations.
Scholars from both home and abroad engaged in in-depth discussions on the topics during the conference. Academic presentations addressed cutting-edge scientific issues including animal evolution from developmental biology perspectives, atmospheric oxygenation impacts on early animal evolution, phylogenetic tree construction of animal lineages, and origins of multicellular eukaryotes. The conference comprehensively explored the formation of the “Tree of Life” and Earth’s habitability evolution from Archaean to Cambrian periods. By pooling collective wisdom to advance disciplinary development, this gathering holds significant theoretical and practical importance.
