Scores of paleontologists from around China are gathering at Chengjiang County in southwest China's Yunnan Province to study a plan on protecting the famous Chengjiang fauna fossils and adjacent geological environment.

The plan, drawn up by prestigious Yunnan University, was designed to deal with the contradictions between the protection of the Chengjiang fossils and mineral exploitation. In recent years, people in Chengjiang County and surrounding areas have begun to open up phosphoric deposits on the fringes of the protected zones, posing a threat to this vital archaeological site.

The framework requires coordinated efforts in protecting the fossils while supporting local economic growth and integrating scientific research with protection.

Meanwhile, Yunnan University launched its paleontology laboratory last week to further study Chengjiang, where fossil records were discovered of the so-called Cambrian explosion, when nearly all major animal groups that have sustained global biodiversity until today first appeared.

The 525-million-year-old Chengjiang fossils include huge quantities of multicellular animals, including worms, arthropods and a specimen of the earliest vertebrate on earth.

Fossils that preserve soft-part anatomy are extremely rare and crucial to knowledge of evolution, providing a far more complete record of the nature of past life forms and communities than does the normal shelly fossil.

The 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 (CAS). To date, scientists have identified fossils of 180 species in 40 categories.

(Xinhua News Agency, China.org.cn March 1, 2005)