Qun Yang is a research professor at Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received his B.Sc. degree from Peking University (Beijing, China, 1981) and Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Dallas (Texas, USA, 1988). He has been working on Mesozoic and Late Palaeozoic radiolarians with an emphasis on taxonomy, biostratigraphy and palaeobiogeography. He has also organized an interdisciplinary research group on molecular palaeobiology, focusing on phylogenetic chronology of early animal groups integrating fossil occurrences and gene divergence dates.