The history and significance of the Chinese Mesozoiccollections hosted at the Swedish Museum of NaturalHistory, Stockholm, and the Museum of Evolution,Uppsala, Sweden

NRM hosts a vast collection of over one million fossil specimens, including both fauna and flora.Amongst these, ca. 30,000 specimens are represented by plant fossils brought to Sweden from China.These include both Palaeozoic and Mesozoic specimens from a range of localities. Presently we areaiming at digitalizing the Mesozoic plant collections and we have several questions to be addressedconcerning the context of these fossils, such as collectors and exact locations.The material was mainly collected in the early 1920s on the initiative of Professor Johan GunnarAndersson and Professor Erik Nystrom, and later also by Professor T. G. Halle. Andersson wasemployed by the Chinese government in 1914 as an advisor in mining, and Nystrom had started ageological institute in Taiyuan. Andersson participated in several field excursions collecting fossils, andhe involved himself in the training of young geologists and assistants, in close collaboration with thedirector of the newly founded Chinese Geological Survey in Beijing, Dr. V. K. Ting.Unfortunately, all the material Halle collected in 1916–17 was lost when the ship sank in the SouthChina Sea on return to Sweden in 1919. Andersson and his assistants worked the following years collecting new material that was successfully shipped to Stockholm, and that is the material we have athand in the museum’s collections today.Besides the palaeobotanical material, a significant collection of fossil Chinese vertebrates was depositedat Uppsala University (today in the Museum of Evolution), and scientifically described by ProfessorCarl Wiman and others, among whom Professor Otto Zdansky should be mentioned. In retrospect, it isclear that the Sino-Swedish collaboration between 1914 and 1927 was a singularly unique historicalevent which allowed mutual exchange of material and scientific knowledge between China and Sweden.