Earth’s first animals lived in Australia’s ancient seas

By Jane Elek
Updated September 24 2018 - 2:51pm, first published 2:30pm
REEF RELIC: Jane Elek admires an ancient fossil reef, made from early blue-green algal stromatolites which grew in the inalnd sea.
REEF RELIC: Jane Elek admires an ancient fossil reef, made from early blue-green algal stromatolites which grew in the inalnd sea.

The ‘Great Inland Sea’ that so many Australian explorers went looking for did actually exist. Unfortunately, the explorers were a few hundred million years too late. Evidence for an inland sea can be found in the rocks of the Flinders Ranges, in South Australia, where the sand, silt and shell fragments on the ancient sea floor have been compressed into layers of sandstone, siltstone, limestone or quartzite; then all tilted at about 30 degrees.

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