Chengjiang Fossils to Apply for World HeritageChina plans to apply for UNESCO's World Natural Heritage listing for the arthropod fossil stratum site located in Chengjiang county in southwest China's Yunnan Province.Chengjiang fossils, dating back some 500 million years, include large quantities of tiny multicellular animals and their embryos, which are said to be the earliest multicellular animals on Earth. Their discovery has led to significant breakthroughs in attempts to understand human evolution. The first discovery was made in July 1984 by Hou Xianguang, a research fellow with the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences when he conducted field investigations at Maotian Mountain in Chengjiang County, the original discovery site. To date, Hou has discovered more than 10,000 fossils in 17 speciations. The most important ones include Yunnan Zoon, microdictyon, anomalocaris and fuxianhuia. With the aid of Jan Bergstrom, an scholar from the Sweden Royal Academy, Hou made a systematic and comprehensive research on fossils found in Chengjiang and published 40-odd academic papers on the subject. "Chengjiang fossils are miracles in the evolution of organisms in the formation of Earth. These fossils offer valuable research on human evolution dating back to 530 million years ago," Hou said. |
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