Chengjiang

Chengjiang (simplified Chinese: 澄江; traditional Chinese: 澂江; pinyin: Chéngjiāng; earlier Tchinkiang) is a city located in Yuxi, Yunnan Province, China, just north of Fuxian Lake.

Administrative divisions

Chengjiang City has 2 subdistricts and 4 townships.

2 subdistricts

Fenglu (凤麓街道)

Longjie (龙街街道)

4 towns

Chengjiang Fossil Site

In evolutionary biology, and especially paleontology, Chengjiang is noted for soft-tissue fossil finds, of the Maotianshan Shales, dated less than 518 million years ago during the Cambrian explosion, which "are as spectacular as the Burgess Shale fauna, and significantly older." These fossils are considered one of the most important fossil finds of the 20th century. They contain an exquisite degree of detail, cover a diverse range of fauna, and are significant in attempts to understand the evolution of life on Earth. In 2012, the Changjiang Fossil Site became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The fossils were first discovered by Henri Mansuy and Jacques Deprat who described them in 1912, the year after Charles Walcott's initial publications on the Burgess Shale. It was not until 1984 that the true significance of the palaeontology of the region was realised by Hou Xian-guang, a professor at Yunnan University, Kunming, where he is director of the Research Center for Chengjiang Biota. Previously he was a professor at the Palaeontological Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing.

Chengjiang is an underdeveloped city having rich phosphate deposits above and below the formation holding the lagerstätte. They have been exploited in part through efforts that began at about the same time that Hou Xian-guang discovered the deposits that bear these exceptional fossils, with phosphate mining bringing in some 2/3 of the city's revenue in 2003.