Chengjiang Fauna

This is a typical fossil site of the Cambrian Explosion. This site is located in the Maotianshan area, Chengjiang County, Yunnan Province. The Chengjiang fauna has preserved more than 40 phyla and more than 100 species of Cambrian fossils, including Spongia, Coelenterata, Mollusca, Anthropoda, vertebrates and the extincted Vetulicolida. Due to the unique geological conditions, both the hard bodies and traces of the soft bodies were preserved as rare and elegant fossils. They serve as samples for studying the physiology, habitat, evolution and living environment of the biota in the early stage of the Cambrian Explosion. These fossils are valuable geological relics, and the Chengjiang fauna, together with the Ediacaran fauna in Australia and the Burgess Shale Formation fauna in Canada, are praised as the three wonders of the early biological evolution of Earth’s history. They are all typical fossil sites for the Cambrian Explosion (Fig. 27).

Fig. 27

Chengjiang fauna