Shuhai Xiao is a paleontologist and professor of geobiology at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. Xiao attended Taihe Middle School in Jiangxi Province, China.
He then worked as an assistant researcher in the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for two years.
[1] He earned a Ph.D. degree in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University in 1998.
He has published extensively on Ediacaran stratigraphy and paleobiology in South China, particularly the Doushantuo,[3][4][5][6] Lantian,[7] and Dengying formations.
[8][9] He is interested in Precambrian microbial world,[10][11][12] the fossil record of eukaryotes,[13][14][15][16] multicellular algae,[17][18][19][20] the Ediacara biota,[21][22] the early evolution of animals,[23][24][25][26] and exceptional fossil preservation.