The cultural and education arm of the United Nations on Friday added a giant meteorite crater in South Africa and a whale boneyard from the time the creatures had feet among seven new global heritage sites.

The new spots also include two long and deep Norwegian fjords, 244 rugged islands off the coast of Mexico, a forest park in Thailand and the last refuge of the crested eagle off southwest Panama.

The heritage list, which has 188 sites around the world designated for their importance to nature and to culture, is part of a campaign to encourage conservation in host countries.

Shiretoko Peninsula in Hokkaido, Japan, was named a UN natural heritage site on Thursday, July 14. (AP photo / Kyodo News)

Nominations are based on a 1972 convention of UNESCO, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The agency has 191 member nations.

Sites get a UN plaque, a boost for conservation efforts and sometimes some money from the UN to help with the cause.

Crater caused evolutionary change

There are 13 previously named sites in Canada including Old Quebec City and Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a site in western Alberta where aboriginals chased buffalo over a cliff for thousands of years.

The South African crater, called Vredefort Dome, has largely eroded since the largest meteorite known to have smashed into the Earth caused what some scientists believe was major climate and evolutionary change about 2 billion years ago. Located about an hour's drive southwest of Johannesburg, it has a diameter of 280 kilometres.

"It provides critical evidence of the earth's geological history and is crucial to our understanding of the evolution of the planet," the UNESCO committee wrote.

Al-Hitan, the Whale Valley in Egypt's Western Desert, contains bones from the evolutionary time in the distant past when whales made the transition from land to sea. Fossils still showing hind legs on a streamlined body can be seen.

Blue sheep and brown bear colour site

Another site named Friday in Durban, South Africa, is the Shiretoko Peninsula on Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island. It's important for an ecosystem influenced by sea ice that forms at its southernmost point in the northern hemisphere. It's also home to threatened fish and bird species.

Two previous designations were expanded. An Indian valley that is home to blue sheep, brown bears and even more colourful flowers was expanded to include a neighbouring mountain wilderness. It's now called Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers National Park.

And a volcanic archipelago in the Hebrides off Scotland, initially honoured for its natural features, was expanded to include its cultural history. No one has lived in the islands of Hirta, Dun, Soay and Boreray since 1930, but stone houses and field systems remain from 2,000 years of subsistence farming.