Any fossil regulation should be designed to promote scientific research and public scientific awareness, a leading Chinese scientist told Xinhua on Saturday.

Zhou Zhonghe, executive director of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), made the remarks in response to a newly-drafted regulation aimed at better protecting China's animal and plant fossils and curbing fossil smuggling.

The Ministry of Land Resources (MLR), together with the State Council Legislative Affairs Office, drafted the new regulation and started in March to invite, via the Internet, public comments and suggestions.

Zhou and his fellow researchers, as well as other elite scientists from Peking University, Nanjing University and the China University of Geosciences, are petitioning for revising the draft regulation by easing curbs on freedom for scientists to excavate fossil sites.

"The national research institutes and universities should have more freedom to excavate fossil sites and carry out appropriate research cooperation with overseas partners while the regulators should of course first and foremost curb illegal fossil trading and smuggling, which leads to devastation of treasured fossil resources," Zhou said.

China became one of the world's paleontological research centers after Pei Wenzhou and Jia Lanpo successively found broken and complete fossilized skulls of Peking Man in the 1920s and the 1930s.

In the latest decade, the CAS IVPP research teams, with Zhou as one principal investigator, made stunning discoveries and high-quality publications on the Jehol Biota, in Liaoning Province, at the world's top academic journals Nature and Science. The CAS Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology also found great fossils at sites of the Chengjiang Fauna and the Cambrian explosion in Yunnan Province.

The leading experts, including eight CAS members, have signed a petition letter to decision makers for possible revision of the draft.

In the petition letter, they also proposed to set up a national expert board to oversee major activities in fossil protection.

(Xinhua News Agency August 9, 2009)