Chengjiang Fossil Site World Heritage Site

Official name

Chengjiang Fossil Site | UNESCO

Country

China | Map

Continent

Asia

Location

24.6688° Lat, 102.9772° Lon | Map

Code

1388

Time Zone

Asia/Shanghai (CST, +0800)

Current Time

Category

Natural

Description

Inscribed 2012. A hilly 512 ha site in Yunnan province, Chengjiang’s fossils present the most complete record of an early Cambrian marine community with exceptionally preserved biota, displaying the anatomy of hard and soft tissues in a very wide variety of organisms, invertebrate and vertebrate. They record the early establishment of a complex marine ecosystem. The site documents at least sixteen phyla and a variety of enigmatic groups as well as about 196 species, presenting exceptional testimony to the rapid diversification of life on Earth 530 million years ago, when almost all of today’s major animal groups emerged. It opens a palaeobiological window of great significance to scholarship.