Conservation heavyweights lock in protection for SA fossil site

A $1 billion nature fund has been used to buy a vast tract of outback South Australia containing the oldest animal fossils on Earth.

Trace fossils: the ancient history of SA’s outback

The entire state of South Australia is effectively the “trace fossil” of an earlier continent, or even an earlier planet, writes archaeologist Alice Gorman.

Flinders Strategic Professor of Palaeontology John Long has led many expeditions to collect well preserved fish specimens from limestone rocks at the Gogo fossil site in the Kimberleys, an area once a tropical reef between 430 million and 360 million years ago.

Unlocking fossil records in the Antarctic

It’s a white Christmas with a difference for an international gang of scientists heading from McMurdo Base to the Transantarctic Mountains in a gruelling hunt for fossils older than dinosaurs.