Riversleigh preserves Australia's forests
Limestone caves in Queensland capture an Australian rainforest fauna before the continent dried out.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 11 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
Riversleigh's freshwater limestones preserve, in exceptional three-dimensional detail, an Australian fauna from a time when the interior was still rainforest: marsupial lions, carnivorous kangaroos, giant flightless birds, and dozens of possum, bandicoot and bat species. Over 250 species have been described. The sequence spans the drying of the continent, so it records the transformation of a wet forest fauna into the arid-adapted one that Australia has today.