Uttar Pradesh's Salkhan Fossil Park Added to UNESCO Tentative List
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Event | Salkhan Fossil Park added to UNESCO's Tentative List of World Heritage Sites. |
| Location | Located in Salkhan village, Sonbhadra district, Uttar Pradesh, adjacent to Kaimoor Wildlife Sanctuary. |
| Area | 25 hectares within the Kaimur Range. |
| Declaration | Officially declared a fossil park in 2002. |
| Key Features | Preserves stromatolites, rare layered sedimentary structures formed by ancient cyanobacteria. |
| Cyanobacteria Significance | Emerged around 3.5 billion years ago, likely the first organisms to perform oxygenic photosynthesis, triggering the Great Oxidation Event (~2.4 billion years ago). |
| Era | Belongs to the Mesoproterozoic Era (1.6-1.0 billion years ago), making the fossils up to 1.4 billion years old. |
| Global Comparison | Older than Shark Bay (Australia) and Yellowstone (USA). |
| Scientific Importance | Challenged the assumption that life began around 570 million years ago, providing insights into Earth's earliest biosphere and evolution of oceanic ecosystems. |
| MoU | Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between UP eco-tourism development board and Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow. |
| World Heritage Sites (WHS) | Recognized for outstanding universal value, protected under the World Heritage Convention, 1972. |
| WHS Categories | Cultural, Natural, or Mixed. |
| India's Status | India ratified the Convention in 1977, with 43 WHS (34 Cultural, 7 Natural, and 2 Mixed) and 63 sites on the Tentative List as of June 2025. |