The rise of Asian palaeontology: a bibliometric and semantic analysis of global and regional research trends

To examine the distinctive characteristics of Asian palaeontological research, we conducted a bibliometric and semantic comparison of global and Asia-tagged publications (1984–2023) from the Web of Science Core Collection, complemented by two programme data sets from the Asian and International Palaeontological Congresses. Publication trends, collaboration networks, and keyword co-occurrence patterns were analysed in R, and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was applied to both publication corpora and congress materials to identify thematic structures. Comparative analyses reveal both shared and distinctive thematic patterns between Asian and global palaeontology. Asian publications and congress programmes show stronger associations with stratigraphy, depositional environments, palaeoenvironmental changes, and regionally significant fossil records, whereas global datasets exhibit greater emphasis on phylogeny, taxonomy, and macroevolutionary themes. Topic similarity and temporal analyses further indicate that Asian congress themes are dynamically reflected in subsequent publication trends, with shifts from deep-time fossil records and exceptional preservation towards integrated marine, palaeoenvironmental, and stratigraphic research. These findings demonstrate that Asian palaeontology has developed distinctive regional research emphases while remaining connected to global palaeontological frameworks. The integration of regional geological records, quantitative approaches, and interdisciplinary methods provides new perspectives for understanding biodiversity evolution and Earth system changes.