The Chengjiang Fossil Site, China

THE CHENGJIANG FOSSIL SITE (China)

This area in Southwestern China has sedimentary deposits containing soft-tissue fossils from a very wide variety of invertebrate and vertebrate organisms from perhaps 530 million years ago. First discovered by a couple of French paleontologists in 1912, they're threatened by the economic need to exploit nearby phosphates in this underdeveloped area.

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(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)