Chengjiang Fossil Site, mainly referring to the Chengjiang biological fossil group, is the most complete preserved early Cambrian marine paleontology fossil group, discovered in 1984, known as "one of the most amazing paleontological discoveries of the 20th century". (Photo / Zhou Jiansheng)
Located in a mountainous and hilly area of Yunnan Province, the Chengjiang Fossil Site covers an area of 512 hectares and exhibits a wide range of hard and soft tissue anatomy of invertebrate and vertebrate life. The formation of early complex marine ecosystems is also documented.
At the Chengjiang site, at least 160 biological phyla have been preserved, and these landscapes and many mysteries vividly reproduce the magnificence of marine life 530 million years ago, as well as the original characteristics of living animals.
The discovery of these biota has shown the oldest animal appearance in the earth's oceans, and also provided a window for people to realize that since the Cambrian biological explosion, there have been many animals living in the earth's oceans with different ecologies.
The Chengjiang biota shows that clawed animals not only existed during the Cambrian explosion, but their morphology was unexpectedly more colorful than that of modern clawed animals.
The fossils of the Chengjiang fauna have been recorded and published so far in 16 (classes), 177 genera, and 199 species.
Among them, there are 146 new genera and 162 new species, covering almost all living and extinct phyla in the animal kingdom, as well as at least 32 taxonomically variable taxa.
Among them, there is the only complete broom-shaped insectoid found in the world so far, the fossils of starworms that have not been accurately reported in other parts of the world, the earliest, most preserved and best-preserved group of leaf-footed mammals in the world, and many other unique fossil species.
All this provides valuable evidence for studying theories of the origin, evolution, and ecology of life that lasted for 53.7 million years in the early days of the Earth.