From our planet’s early life-forms to the dying days of the dinosaurs, Chinese fossil beds have produced stunning finds in recent years. One scintillating discovery is from the Qiongzhuoshi Formation, whose fossils of strange marine creatures from the early Cambrian period 530 million years ago are an eastern analog of the famous Burgess Shale Formation in Canada. China is also a hotbed for fossils of early marine reptiles. When life rebounded in the early Triassic after a mass extinction 252 million years ago, a new kind of top predator arose: ichthyosaurs. Marine reptiles would dominate the oceans until another mass extinction ended the Cretaceous 65 million years ago. The origins of marine reptiles are an enigma that Chinese fossils are beginning to penetrate. Most sensationally, China has been the key to solving one of the biggest questions in dinosaur science in the past 150 years: the real relationship between birds and dinosaurs. In the past 15 years, northeast China has yielded exquisitely preserved fossils of feathered dinosaurs, the likes of which have never been seen before. This symposium will explore these and other fascinating finds from China’s prehistoric past.