The Chengjiang Fossil, a site in southwest China's Yunnan Province, was included into the World Heritage List on Sunday.

The Chengjiang Fossil site of China was approved to join the World Heritage List at the 36th World Heritage Conference held in St. Petersburg, Russia.

It is China's first fossil site included into the World Heritage List. So far, 43 properties in China have been recorded on the list.

The Chengjiang fossil site covers an area of 512 hectares with a buffer zone of 220 hectares. Discovered in 1984, the site contains the decedents of 200 species of marine creatures dated back to 530 million years ago, making it one of the most amazing discoveries of prehistoric lives in the 20th century.

The fossil site was considered as the best window on marine life and the ecological system in the Cambrian period.

On Friday, another Chinese cultural site, Xanadu in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China, was listed as a world heritage.

(Xinhua News Agency July 1, 2012)