Australian Fossil Mammal Sites (Riversleigh / Naracoorte)
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How it came to be
After it separated from Antarctica, Australia was almost totally isolated for 35 million years and evolved its own mammals. Two fossil areas, Riversleigh in Queensland to the north and Naracoorte in South Australia to the south, together record the last 30 million years of that mammal evolution.
Riversleigh's fossils, from the Oligocene and Miocene some 10 to 30 million years ago, show humid rainforest giving way to dry eucalypt forest. They lie in soft freshwater limestone that was never compacted, so the bones keep their three-dimensional shape. Fossils were first noted there in 1901, and systematic exploration has gone on since 1976.
At Naracoorte, Blanche Cave was found in 1845. In 1969 Victoria Cave yielded the largest known deposit of Pleistocene vertebrate fossils in Australia, including ice-age megafauna such as the marsupial lion. The two areas were inscribed together in 1994.
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