The science
Learn about the outstanding fossil records at the heart of the Flinders Ranges World Heritage nomination.
This page will help you:
- understand why the Flinders Ranges is so valuable to science
- know which parts of the landscape are included in the nomination.
A story written in stone
The Flinders Ranges is the only place on Earth where scientists have observed a near-continuous geological record spanning 200 million years in one locality.
The fossil sequence clearly demonstrates the rise of a habitable planet and the dawn of animal life. Nowhere else in the world is this story so clear, so interconnected or so well presented.
A World Heritage nomination can be a single site, or a 'serial nomination' made up of multiple sites, known as 'component parts'.
In the Flinders Ranges region, seven separate component parts have been identified by experts for inclusion in a World Heritage serial nomination.
They are not the only places in the region with geological and palaeontological value, but these seven contain outstanding values of potential World Heritage quality. When brought together, the component parts complete the unique Flinders Ranges World Heritage story. They are located on:
- Three National Parks: Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park, Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park, and Nilpena Ediacara National Park.
- Three pastoral properties: Arkaroola, Maynards Well and Puttapa.
- The newly acquired Balcoracana paddock, that will be incorporated into Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park and be part of the Ikara-Bunkers World Heritage component part.
The dawn of animal life, revealed across seven fossil sites in the Flinders Ranges
| Geological period | Component part name | Location | What the fossils show |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cryogenian | Arkaroola | Arkaroola Station | Arkaroola takes us to a world where single-celled organisms dominated the Earth. The sea floor was covered by simple organic mats, and reefs were built by single-celled microorganisms. It was life before animals. Arkaroola’s creeks and gorges record the greatest shifts in climate that Earth has ever experienced – from the ice sheets of “Snowball Earth” to the warming of the planet and widespread reefs. |
| Cryogenian | Vulkathunha | Vulkathunha-Gammon Ranges National Park | Vulkathunha reinforces our understanding of how different the Earth was before and during the dawn of animal life. Here is evidence of a world where even the days and years were longer. |
| Cryogenian/Ediacaran/ Cambrian | Ikara-Brachina | Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park | Ikara–Brachina is a landscape extending through geological time, from a world dominated by tiny single-celled organisms to a world dominated by large multicellular animals. We see how animal life evolved against a backdrop of extraordinary planetary processes including global glaciation, changing levels of oxygen, and an enormous meteor impact. |
| Ediacaran | Nilpena | Nilpena Ediacara National Park | Like nowhere else on Earth, Nilpena takes us to the dawn of animal life – the Ediacaran biota – and the emergence of thriving ecological communities. The sea floor captured at Nilpena is a place of firsts: the earliest animals, and ecological innovations such as the advent of mobility, of scavenging, and of sexual reproduction. |
| Ediacaran/Cambrian | Castle Rock | Maynards Well Station | Castle Rock records the transition from the Ediacaran to the Cambrian Period, a world dominated by animals. Animals first started to move and burrow into the organic mat that covered most of the sea floor, mixing the sediment. The chemistry of the ocean and the nature of our planet was never the same again. |
| Cambrian | Ajax Hill | Puttapa Station | Ajax Hill provides a window into the most diverse and best-preserved reefs constructed by animals that are the epitome of the early Cambrian world. |
| Cambrian | Ikara-Bunkers | Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park (including recently acquired Balcoracana Paddock) | Ikara–Bunkers records the beginnings of the Cambrian explosion of life, when the ancestors of most of today's animals appeared in warm, shallow equatorial seas. This was still an ocean world, before animal life on land. Short-lived extinct animal groups lived side-by-side with those bearing features that are instantly recognisable today, including skeletons, eyes and limbs. Behaviours evolved for different feeding styles and protection against the earliest predators. |
