Photo: Indian Fossil Bed Being Ground Into Cement

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Kashmiri laborers break stones at a quarry in Athwajan, on the outskirts of Srinagar, on November 27, 2006. The workers earn 200 rupees (U.S. $4) a day to work from dawn to dusk.

But some quarries in the war-torn Indian state are illicitly mining limestone deposits that hold 260-million-year-old fossils, including many that could shed light on how life evolved anew after a mass extinction event about 251 million years ago.

Photograph by Fayaz Kabil/Reuters

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