On April 25th, Changyang Qingjiang National Geopark, a large-scale geopark of tectonic and karst geomorphology, held its opening ceremony and was formally opened to the public. It is a natural geological museum integrating hominid site, stratum paleontology, glacier relic, structural feature, valley and Karst landform as well as human landscape. It is not only an ideal place to explore the conservation form and evolution of life at the early stage of the Earth, but also a treasure of all knowledge about the origin of human beings and the early civilization of Tujia ethnic group.

　　It’s informed that the geopark is dominated by the mainstream of Qing Jiang River within the geological corridor (in the East-to-west direction). This corridor, along with Wuluo Zhongli Mountain and Xianglu Shi, forms “one corridor plus two parks” in Qingjiang National Geopark. Covering an area of 354.04k㎡, the geopark possesses the most complete sequence stratigraphy in China from Nanhua period to Triassic period and typical ancient glacial sequence profiles. Within the geopark, there are also the most complete late Paleozoic Era stratum with a marine and continental alternative deposition and a large-scaled sedimentary hematite deposit. Besides, the geopark is the location of geological section named after Huangjiacheng Formation during Devonian Period and Carboniferous Changyang Formation By now, thousands of animal and plant fossils in over 30 categories have been discovered in the geopark. Specifically, these fossils cover Changyang Men Fossil---the early homo sapiens in China 190,000 years ago, the earliest animal embryo fossil in the world, the acritarchs fossil named as Tianzhu Mountain and Changyang Fish discovered in the stratum of Devonian Period as well as the earliest fern.(Reporter Wang Jingjing, and correspondent Du Qiang, Yang Guangxian)