ZHAO Yuanlong, a research fellow at the Guizhou University, announced on August 22, 2005 that he and his team have found intact fossilized sponges in global shape that has an age of 543 million years. The fossils were discovered by ZHAO and other researchers from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, a part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Changyangou Village, Yankong, Jinsha County in Guizhou Province. Some 50 pieces of fossilized ancient sponges are currently preserved at the Paleontology Museum of the Guizhou University. The unearthed fossilized sponges are the precursors of the first sponge explosion or radiation, which are important evidences for studying the evolution of the sponge from the late Neoproterozoic to Cambrian Periods.