600 mn-year-old plant fossils found in China

BEIJING - Paleontologists in China have unearthed thousands of pieces of plant fossils dating back to about 600 million years, officials said.

A spokesman with the government of Xiuning county in Anhui province said the fossils were from the Sinian period (825 million to 570 million years ago), Xinhua reported.

The plants lived in the warm shallow sea that used to cover Xiuning millions of years ago, said Yuan Xunlai, a paleontologist with the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, which was in charge of the excavation.

According to the spokesman, the county will build a national geopark to protect the fossils and offer tourists a chance to learn about the plants that lived hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs.