Oldest evidence of life on land found in 3.48 billion-year-old Australian rocks

Whether you are looking at an actual fossil or crinkles in the rock itself can be hard to tell in the search for the earliest life on earth. The discovery of 3.5 billion – year – old fossils in the Australian desert in the 1980s has long shadowed these doubts Now, scientists think they ended up putting the matter to bed

In ancient fossilized microbe formations called stromatolites, found in the Dresser Formation fossil site of the Pilbara region, researchers have finally detected traces of organic matter.

“This is an exciting discovery – for the first time, we’re able to show the world that these stromatolites are definitive evidence for the earliest life on Earth,” said geologist Raphael Baumgartner of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia.

You may remember the time scientists claimed to have found 3.7 billion-year-old fossils in Greenland. Later research determined that these fossils were just plain old rocks, and the crown was returned to the Pilbara fossils.

But, although everyone was pretty sure the Pilbara fossils were the real deal, it hadn’t actually been conclusively proven. They had the shape and structure of microbial stromatolites, but no evidence of organic matter to back it up.

There’s more riding on this than a tiara and a sash reading “Oldest fossils.” It’s deeply relevant to one of the fundamental questions about our very existence: When and how did life develop on this sloshy blue marble?

So, Baumgartner and his team went digging. Not literally, though; they analyzed previously drilled core samples from deep underground, below where the rocks could have been affected by the weather. This means these samples were much better preserved than those from the surface; in their paper, the team said the preservation was “exceptional”.

The researchers analyzed the samples in thin slices using multiple techniques, including scanning electron microscopy and scanning transmission electron microscopy; energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy; nano-scale secondary ion mass spectrometry; and stable carbon isotope analysis. 

If that seems like overkill, well, it’s not really. If one of those lines of inquiry showed a positive result and the rest didn’t, it would mean much shakier ground for drawing a conclusion. But things looked good across the board.

The team’s analyses revealed that the stromatolites are predominantly made up of a mineral called pyrite, riddled with nanoscopic pores. And in the pyrite are inclusions of nitrogen-bearing organic material, as well as strands and filaments of organic matter that closely resemble the remnants of biofilms formed by microbe colonies.

“The organic matter that we found preserved within pyrite of the stromatolites is exciting – we’re looking at exceptionally preserved coherent filaments and strands that are typically remains of microbial biofilms,” Baumgartner said.

“I was pretty surprised – we never expected to find this level of evidence before I started this project.”

Previously, a different team of UNSW researchers found evidence of 3.48 billion-year-old microbes in hot spring deposits in the Pilbara.

Because those deposits are about the same age as the crust of Mars, it’s thought that they could tell us how to find potential fossils on Mars – especially since there’s evidence the Red Planet once had hot springs too.

Indeed, NASA has been investigating the Pilbara to try to learn the possible geological signatures that could indicate the presence of stromatolites.

“Understanding where life could have emerged is really important in order to understand our ancestry,” Baumgartner said. “And from there, it could help us understand where else life could have occurred – for example, where it was kick-started on other planets.”

42,000 years old Mungo Man skeleton, the oldest human remains found in Australia

First, a skull, then a torso and eventually an entire skeleton emerged from the sands of south-west New South Wales. When the bones of Australia’s oldest and most complete humans were unearthed in the 1970s it rewrote history.

Dubbed Mungo Man after the dried-up lake basin where he was found, the skeleton dates back about 42,000 years. But his removal from his burial site to a Canberra university 43 years ago caused his traditional owners great angst.

He’s now been returned to his country, but there’s a fresh dilemma to be resolved: Should Mungo Man be interred forever or should his remains still be accessible to science?

It’s a fraught question which goes to the heart of who owns the rights to access Mungo Man’s history, traditional owners of the Willandra Lakes World heritage region — the Mutthi Mutthi, Ngyiampaa, and Paakantyi/Barkandji peoples — will meet to begin discussions on his ultimate resting place.

“My preferred option is to bury him and put a nice plaque on him, rather than have him lying in a box waiting for someone to come and poke him again,” Ngyiampaa elder Roy Kennedy said, adding researchers “have had him long enough”.

But many scientists fear burying Mungo Man will close off any chance of future research. Future techniques may become available that will tell us so much more about the story of Mungo Man,” said Dr. Jim Bowler, the geologist who found the skeleton.

“The prospect of possible future access must be resolved.”

Finding Mungo Man

Dr. Bowler stumbled across Mungo Man in 1974 while researching the semi-arid landscapes of south-west New South Wales. The wide scrubby basins fringed by sand dunes were once an ancient series of lakes, brimming with freshwater and teeming with life.

Among them was Lake Mungo, which dried up about 15,000 years ago, leaving behind a stunning landscape. Dr. Bowler had ventured out after a rainstorm when he spotted a white object poking out of the sand, glinting in the afternoon sun. It was a skull.

He alerted archaeologists at the Australian National University and the team rushed to the scene, carefully excavating Mungo Man and taking him 800 kilometers away to Canberra. Mutthi Mutthi elder Mary Pappin’s view is that it was Mungo Man who found Dr. Bowler, not the other way around. Mungo Man was very clever because he revealed himself to a man of science,” she said.

“He thought he [Dr. Bowler] would be the ideal person to make white Australia understand just how long us Aboriginal people had been here.”

What has Mungo Man taught us?

During Mungo Man’s excavation in 1974, Dr. Bowler dated the earth in which he was buried and estimated his age at 30,000 years or older. Later, scientists would redate the bones at 42–44,000 years. For many Aboriginal people, this was a welcome confirmation of what they had long been saying.

“We believe he came because he wanted to tell the rest of Australia as well as the world just how long us Aboriginal people have been walking on this landscape,” Ms Pappin said.

It wasn’t just the skeleton’s antiquity that astonished scientists. It was the complexity of his burial. Mungo Man had been carefully laid out, his hands placed in his lap, and his body covered in red ochre. The substance was transported from hundreds of kilometers away.

The remains of a small fire were close by.

“To find on the shores of Lake Mungo the extraordinary ritual of ochre and fire was a moment of sheer wonder,” said Dr Bowler, now aged 88.

“We were blown away by it.”

Further research found Mungo Man’s lower teeth had been deliberately extracted during adolescence, suggesting initiation rites. Arthritis in his right elbow pointed to a life of spear throwing. Scientists say Mungo Man showed these ancient people had culture, complex language, complex tools, and ceremonies. Paakantyi man Michael Young said this cultural sophistication changed all prior perceptions of Aboriginal people.

“That idea that Aboriginal people were nomadic and primitive people have been blown away,” he said. As a result of the unique cultural and environmental features uncovered in the Willandra Lakes, the region was listed on the world heritage register in 1981.

Australian scientists discover ancient underwater Aboriginal sites

Aboriginal archeological sites were found first underwater in the northwest of Australia a thousand years ago when the current seabed was dry land.

Artifacts of Aboriginal discovered off the Pilbara coast in Western Australia represent Australia’s oldest known underwater archaeology. The observations were carried out through a series of archeological and geophysical surveys in the Dampier Archipelago, as part of the Deep History of Sea Country Project, funded through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project Scheme.

The Murujuga Aborigines Company has collaborated with a team of International Archeologists from Flinders University, University of Western Australia, James Cook University, ARA – Airborne Research Australia and York University to find and investigate ancient artifacts at two underwater sites that have created hundreds of stone tools made from aboriginal peoples including grinding stones.

In a study published in PLOS ONE, the ancient underwater sites, at Cape Bruguieres and Flying Foam Passage, provide new evidence of Aboriginal ways of life from when the seabed was dry land, due to lower sea levels, thousands of years ago. The submerged cultural landscapes represent what is known today as Sea Country to many Indigenous Australians, who have a deep cultural, spiritual, and historical connection to these underwater environments.

Archaeologists announce the discovery of two underwater archaeological sites that were once on dry land. This is an exciting step for Australian archaeology as we integrate maritime and Indigenous archaeology and draw connections between land and sea,” says Associate Professor Jonathan Benjamin who is the Maritime Archaeology Program Coordinator at Flinders University’s College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

“Australia is a massive continent but few people realize that more than 30% of its landmass was drowned by sea-level rise after the last ice age. This means that a huge amount of archaeological evidence documenting the lives of Aboriginal people is now underwater.

“Now Archaeologists finally have the first proof that at least some of this archaeological evidence survived the process of sea-level rise. The ancient coastal archaeology is not lost for good; we just haven’t found it yet. These new discoveries are a first step toward exploring the last real frontier of Australian archaeology.”

The dive team mapped 269 artifacts at Cape Bruguieres in shallow water at depths down to 2.4 meters below modern sea level. Radiocarbon dating and analysis of sea-level changes show the site is at least 7000 years old.

The second site at Flying Foam Passage includes an underwater freshwater spring 14 meters below sea level. This site is estimated to be at least 8500 years old. Both sites may be much older as the dates represent minimum ages only; they may be even more ancient.

The team of archaeologists and geoscientists employed predictive modelling and various underwater and remote sensing techniques, including scientific diving methods, to confirm the location of sites and the presence of artifacts.

“At one point there would have been dry land stretching out 160 km from the current shoreline. That land would have been owned and lived on by generations of Aboriginal people.

Our discovery demonstrates that underwater archaeological material has survived sea-level rise, and although these sites are located in relatively shallow water, there will likely be more in deeper water offshore” says Chelsea Wiseman from Flinders University who has been working on the DHSC project as part of Ph.D. research.

“These territories that are now underwater harboured favourable environments for Indigenous settlements including freshwater, ecological diversity and opportunities to exploit marine resources which would have supported relatively high population densities” says Dr Michael O’Leary, a marine geomorphologist at The University of Western Australia.”

The discovery of these sites emphasizes the need for stronger federal legislation to protect and manage underwater heritage across 2 million square kilometers of landscapes that were once above sea level in Australia, and hold major insights into human history.

“Managing, investigating and understanding the archaelogy of the Australian continental shelf in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional owners and custodians is one of the last frontiers in Australian archaeology” said Associate Professor Benjamin.

“Our results represent the first step in a journey of discovery to explore the potential of archaeology on the continental shelves which can fill a major gap in the human history of the continent,” he said.

In Murujuga, this adds substantial additional evidence to support the deep time history of human activities accompanying rock art production in this important National Heritage Listed Place.

Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation CEO Peter Jeffries says the discoveries will help the community add to the story of Aboriginal people in the Pilbara.

“Further exploration could unearth similar cultural relics and help us better understand the life of the people who were so connected to these areas of land which are now underwater.

“With this comes a new requirement for the careful management of Aboriginal sea country as it’s not automatically protected by current Heritage legislation, however, plans are progressing to lead this change and protect our sea country land and heritage.”

Mining Camp Found in Southeast Australia

Researchers from Macquarie University were examining remains of industrial equipment that was used to haul shale out of the valley when New South Wales National Parks rangers alerted them to the presence of other structures and artifacts, including wall foundations, hearths, paving, corrugated iron roofing, ceramics, and glass that had been previously hidden by vegetation.

Since the summer bushfires, a staff camp has emerged near the Ruined Castle in the Jamison Valley. The fires uncovered previously vegetated remnants and artifacts, including the wall bases, hearths’ paving, and corrugated iron roofing, as well as ceramics and glass.

The remains of a shale mining settlement used by workers from the 1880s until around 1914 was studied by a team at Macquarie University.

Associate professors Tanya Evans and Shawn Ross, from the history and archaeology department, are working on the project with Professor Lucy Taksa from the Centre for Workforce Futures at Macquarie Business School.

The team was originally invited by NPWS and the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute to survey the industrial remains associated with the Bleichert Ropeway, which was erected to haul the shale from the valley up the escarpment.

“Then NPWS approached the team about some ‘huts’ they had noticed while doing other work,” Associate Professor Evans said.

Local Katoomba identity, Phil Hammon, knew that workers had lived there during the mining period and encouraged that focus of the project. The team is now concentrating on new archaeological surveys and excavations in and around the mining settlement.

“Archaeologist members of the team will head to the Mountains ASAP to undertake another survey of the site, building on two earlier surveys,” Professor Evans said.

“Historian members will undertake archival research and organize oral history interviews and focus groups with local community members as soon as COVID-19 restrictions allow us.”

Professor Taksa said the team will combine archival, documentary, oral, photographic, and material evidence to reconstruct life in the village.

“The aim is to give ‘flesh and voice’ to the people who lived and worked at this place,” she said.

The summer fires will also enable them to assess the impact of bushfires on heritage sites.

“The study will be looking at the effects of ‘de-industrialization’ on the landscape – that is, the story of how this industrial village basically has returned to nature but has left certain impacts on the landscape.”

The information discovered through the study will be used for conservation and heritage, and also for tourism and education purposes.

Down the track, Professor Evans said they hope to gather more information on the area’s rich history through oral history interviews and focus groups.

Late 19th-Century Brisbane’s original Chinatown found under Albert Street in Australia

QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA – The Archeology org document in Brisbane, a town located on the East Coast of Australia, that more than 200 objects from the end of the 19th century, including tobacco and opium pipes, bottles, crockery, books, and animal bones, have been unearthed in Brisbane.

The Niché Environment and Heritage archeologist Kevin Rains believed that the site was the original Chinatown area in the town and that artifacts belonged to the people who went there at the end of the 1880s gold rush and founded a working-class community called Frog’s Hollow.

Frog’s Hollow was the boggy, low-lying area that ran from the bottom of Albert Street near the Botanic Gardens towards Elizabeth Street and stretching two or three blocks either side of Albert Street.

Dr. Rains, who works for Niche Environment, said the “significant archaeological finds” were “absolutely invaluable” to learn about Brisbane’s earliest days.

“Queensland was a later colony. There was a lot of diversity and development and a lot of ‘get up and go’,” he said.

“There was a lot of wealth even in those early days. People were already building up strong businesses.”

About 200 artifacts – tobacco and opium pipes, leather goods, bottles, crockery, old books, skeletons of animals, walls and pipes, and a perfume container – have all been unearthed. Some small containers held pickles and soya sauce, Dr. Rains said.

“It is equivalent to the Rocks area of Sydney or Little Lonsdale street in Melbourne,” he said.

“It was a working-class area, but also highly multicultural, with people of British and European backgrounds but also Chinese, South Sea Islanders and people from other parts of Asia living there as well.

“It had food shops, opium dens, hotels, lots of boarding houses, and a mix of grocers, all sorts of things.

“We have found evidence of a saddlery – Robert Schute’s Saddlery – and a leather shoemaker.” Large numbers of Chinese, who came to Queensland for the gold at Gympie, eventually returned to Brisbane.

“In Queensland the gold rushes began to peter out around the 1880s and there was legislation keeping them from prospecting and working on the gold fields, so a lot of them moved into Brisbane and began setting up business there,” Dr Rains said.

One foundation wall unearthed by the excavation crew working on Albert Street comes from the Gympie Hotel, which later became Brannelly’s Oriental Hotel in 1885.

“We found old walls on both sides of the [Albert] street,” Dr Rains said.

“We found some of the foundations of the original Gympie Hotel on the left-hand side and we’ve also found wall and floors from the old saddlery and the Nine Holes shops on the other side.

“Nine Holes was was row of shops on the north side of Albert Street where the [Cross River Rail] station is being built today and Brannelly’s Colonial Hotel was on the other side, the southern side.” The Frog’s Hollow excavation work was completed in January 2020.

“A bit after that we did all the analysis of all the actual artefacts and I’m in the process now of writing up the report for the state government,” Dr Rains said. Dr Rains said archaeologists very much hoped to find parts of early Brisbane as the excavation work for Cross River Rail.

“But we were not sure. We knew some of the buildings that were built along Albert Street in the 1920s, now demolished, had fairly shallow foundations, so there was a lot of potential for a lot of earlier material to be underneath it,” he said.

“The big surprise was Brannelly’s Oriental Hotel because they built a 1970s building – which they demolished in the 1980s – over the top of it.

“It was built on the same spot as the Gympie Hotel – corner of Albert and Mary streets – and it [the Gympie Hotel] got redeveloped in 1885 as Branelly’s Oriental Hotel.

“It was built from stone and brick. But in the 1980s it got demolished and a 1980s-style corporate tower got built there.

“Its a bit of a shame. The photos show it had lovely iron lacework that there was during those times. It was like the Bellevue Hotel, the same period.

“So while we didn’t think we would find a lot because the big corporate towers were built, we did find a lot of the foundations, which was very good.”

110-million-old rare species of ‘toothless dinosaur’ discovered in Australia

Anyone a fan of ‘How To Train Your Dragon’? We know, totally random, but the main dragon was named Toothless. Just like him, we a unique species of ‘toothless’ dinosaurs that are 110 million years old in Australia have been found.

A fossil of a rare and unique toothless dinosaur, named Elaphrosaur, has been discovered by paleontologists in Australia.

As per a statement released by the Swinburne University of Technology, the dinosaur must have roamed in Australia around 110 million years ago.

It stood about the height of a small emu, measuring 2 meters from its head to the end of a long tail, and had short arms, each ending in four fingers.

The toothless dinosaur was identified by a team led by Swinburne University of Technology paleontologist Dr. Stephen Poropat. It’s known for having long necks, stumpy arms and small hands, and it probably didn’t survive on meat.

What’s In It?

According to the statement released by the Swinburne University of Technology, the dinosaur must have roamed in Australia around 110 million years ago.

This rare fossil was discovered in 2015 by Jessica Parker, a volunteer digger, near Cape Otway in Victoria, Australia; it was identified by a team led by Swinburne University of Technology paleontologist Dr. Stephen Poropat.

The reports say that the 5 cm long vertebrae fossil or the long neck bone belonged to a dinosaur known as Elaphrosaur, which means ‘light-footed lizard’. Reportedly, the fossil is related to Tyrannosaurus Rex and Velociraptor.

The said the fossil was believed to be an animal that was around 2 m long, i.e., 6.5 ft long. However, similar fossils, related to Elaphrosaur, which were previously discovered in China, Tanzania, and Argentina, revealed that these can grow up to 6 m in length.

What’s More?

Paleontologist Dr. Stephen Propat informed that the Australian elaphrosaurus had stumpy arms, long necks, small hands, and more likely, it was lightly-built that probably did not survive on meat. He also added that the findings regarding the dinosaurs are rather bizarre.

The few known skulls of Elaphrosaur reveal that the youngsters had teeth, however, when they grow into adults, they start losing their teeth, which are then replaced with a horny beak, he mentioned.

They are not yet sure if this fact holds true for the Victorian Elaphrosaur yet; however, they might be able to find out more if they ever discover a skull. 

Australian Aboriginal people were baking bread and farming grain 20,000 years before Egypt

What would your response be if you were asked who were the world’s first bakers? Many people think of ancient Egypt first, where it is believed that bread was baked about 17,000 BCE first. But there is evidence that grindstones were used in Australia to turn seeds into flour 30 thousand years ago.

At Cuddie Falls, in New South Wales, Archeologists found evidence of this in the form of an ancient grinding stone that was used to turn grass seeds into flour.

These were the bakers of antiquity. It took Egypt 12,000 years to repeat this baking experiment. Why don’t our hearts fill with wonder and pride?

Australian sovereign nations cultivated domesticated plants, sewed clothes, engineered streams for aquacultural and agricultural purposes, and forged spiritual codes for the use of seed in trade, agricultural enterprises, marriage, and ceremony.

This was and is an incredible human response to the difficulties of fostering economic, cultural and social policies. It may be unique in its longevity but also in its ability to flourish without resort to war.

Australia’s reluctance to acknowledge what was lost can be witnessed in our ignorance of the birth of baking, the gold standard of economic achievement.

Why is this? Is it a malicious refusal to recognize the economic triumphs of the people from whom the land was taken or a simple culture of forgetting fostered by the bedazzlement of Australian resources and opportunities?

If we could rid ourselves of the myth of low Aboriginal achievement and nomadic habits, we might move toward a greater appreciation of our land.

We might begin to wonder about the grains that explorer Thomas Mitchell saw being harvested in the 1830s, and the yam daisy monoculture he saw stretching to the horizon of his ‘Australia Felix’, the early name given to western Victoria.

These crops must have been grown without pesticides and chemical fertilisers and in harmony with the climate; surely they are worthy of our investigation.

If you search for Australian research into yam daisies you inevitably come across, Beth Gott, an honorary research fellow at Monash University.

She has almost single-handedly led the interest in this wonderful plant. Inspired by her work, a Landcare group and Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in East Gippsland have begun field trials into the staple of the southern Aboriginal economies.

Similarly, the fish traps at Brewarrina seen by Mitchell and other explorers created economic conditions that allowed the people to live in semi-sedentary villages of over 1000 people; Mitchell marveled not just at the villages’ size but also their comfort and elegance.

Since Mitchell’s report, however, you will look in vain for later reference to the Brewarrina fish traps even though some archaeologists have speculated that they maybe 40,000 years old and as such the oldest human construction on the planet.

Even if you accept the more common age of 15,000 years, these structures are still amongst the world’s first. Until recently, the sole publication about them was a 50-page book published in Brewarrina in 1976.

When we eventually acknowledge the food plants adapted to Australian conditions and domesticated by Aboriginal people, let’s hope we don’t just celebrate them every ‘Baker’s holiday’ but recognize the intellectual property Aboriginal Australia has vested in them.

Amber Fossil Shows Two Trapped Flies that Died while Mating 41 Million Years Ago

One of the earliest, fossilized animals ever found are a pair of fornicating flies that were preserved in amber 41 million years ago. The frisky insects appear to have been in the very throes of passion when they got trapped in gluey tree resin and preserved — unparted, even in death.

With time, the resin has transformed into amber and still has a twisted leg in the amorous couple. The fact that flies typically only take a few seconds to copulate makes the fossil find from Victoria, Australia even more rare and remarkable.

‘ You might conclude that the fly of these long legs was ‘ messed up ‘ 41 million years ago, ” said paper author and paleontologist Jeffrey Stilwell of the University of Monash at Melbourne, He was certain this was the scenario when the specimen was first analyzed — a fact which co-author Dan Bickel, a fly expert from the Australian Museum, then confirmed.

‘The flies could have accidentally landed on the tree resin to mate, and then got stuck forever together, literally,’ Professor Stilwell said.

‘You can imagine all of the statements by my amber student volunteers, one being “Doin’ it Gondwana style”, etc.’ Gondwana was an ancient supercontinent that eventually split into separate landmasses — including Australia.

Mating has been captured in amber unearthed from other parts of the world, but is nevertheless ‘very rare’, Professor Stilwell said. In Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Jurassic Park, dinosaurs are reintroduced to the world by extracting their DNA from a mosquito that had been preserved in amber. Most biologists agree that such a scenario would not be possible. But many experts do believe that DNA can be preserved in amber for millions of years.

‘But, in fact, [they] are many millions of years old, providing us with an enormous amount of information on ancient terrestrial ecosystems.’

Professor Stilwell and colleagues stumbled upon the flies while trawling through almost 6,000 pieces of fossilized amber. The material was unearthed from rocks dating back from 54–40 million years ago found at two sites — one in Western Tasmania and the other in Victoria.

Among them were the two mating specimens of long-legged flies, known to the scientific community as ‘Dolichopodidae’. These bugs are commonly found across Britain and the rest of the world today.

‘This may be the first example of “frozen behaviour” in the fossil record of Australia,’ said Professor Stilwell.

‘Frozen behaviours are rarely recorded in the fossil record, but can be quite diverse, including defence, parasitism, feeding, swarms, and so on.’

Dolichopodidae comprises mainly small metallic flies. The adult males wave their legs when courting potential suitors. Other finds from the amber collection included a flake of amber containing a beautifully preserved biting midge and a larger piece with a long-legged fly and another biting midge.

Both specimens are about 41 million years old and were found in Anglesea, Victoria. The team also analyzed amber deposits unearthed by the team at other spots in southeastern Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand that dates back 230 million years. There were fossilized ants, the first Australian fossils of ‘slender springtails’, a tiny, wingless arthropod and an insect called a felt scale (Eriococcidae) — all-around 53 million years old.

There was also a cluster of juvenile spiders, biting midges (Ceratopogonidae), two liverwort and two moss species. They are the oldest known animals and plants preserved in amber from Southern Gondwana. Finding Triassic, Cretaceous and Paleogene fossils from an ancient tree resin in Australia and eastern New Zealand is a dream come true,’ said Professor Stilwell.

‘We now have our first definite glimpses of ancient subpolar greenhouse Earth ecosystems, when Australia and Antarctica were attached and situated much further south in higher latitudes.’

‘Many discoveries are the first-ever for their respective groups of animals and plants, including the first-ever ants, springtails and others, including the first recorded evidence for “frozen behaviour” in the fossil record of mating flies.’

‘There has never been a fossil ant recorded in Australia before, but we can now state for the first time that ants have been a significant part of the Australian ecosystem for over 40 million years.’ Most amber records are from the Northern Hemisphere. The study has confirmed it was abundant in the ancient supercontinents of Southern Pangea and Southern Gondwana.

‘The research furthers our understanding of prehistoric southern ecosystems in Australia and New Zealand during the Late Triassic to mid-Paleogene periods — 230 to 40 million years ago,’ added Professor Stilwell.