USA Today compared you to Indiana Jones in a feature last year for discovering almost 30 new dinosaur species. Is this a hard rep to live up to?
I don’t know. It’s great to have that paper recognize you, but it’s very rare in China that scientists are compared with famous movie figures. I’ve just been lucky, I think. You never know what your next discovery will be. In my early years, I always thought, “Oh, this is the last major discovery I’ll make,” but then the year after there’ll be something even more exciting. Dinosaurs are so bizarre, so strange, that you need to be prepared for anything.
Why have some of your discoveries been so controversial?
It’s really quite common for people to criticize you when you have a really bizarre discovery and really new idea. When we first discovered the Microraptor, the four-winged dinosaur, it was such a bizarre animal that it was very hard for people to believe it existed. This is normal for science. It pushes you to find more evidence, polish your theories and hypotheses.
Where does China rank in terms of world dinosaur research?
You can say China is the world center right now. We have evidence from China that allows us to study the origin of flight (in birds), the transformation of wings and the digits on birds’ hands. After our discoveries, our research, our analysis, I think there’s little doubt that birds are descended from dinosaurs, and we’re quite confident that living birds are a group of highly specialized dinosaurs. So dinosaurs are still around!

Interview by Anthony Tao