A range of low hills in the northern Flinders Ranges of South Australia, about 650 kilometres north of Adelaide, where some of the oldest known multicellular lifeforms were found, finds so important that a whole period of Earth’s history, the Ediacaran, is named after these hills. Where the name comes from is disputed. An early source says it meant a place near water, another that it is a mishearing of words for hard, stony ground, and Beverley Patterson, an Adnyamathanha woman who had heard stories about the fossils since childhood, said in 2023 that Ediacara is the Adnyamathanha word for the zebra finch. The hills lie within Nilpena Ediacara National Park, which opened in April 2023, and two fossil sites here are protected under Australian heritage law. Before the fossils made the place famous it was copper and silver country, mined from 1888. The Flinders Ranges fossil sites are on UNESCO’s tentative list, with a vote due in 2026.
The Ediacaran biota, some of the oldest multicellular life · Ediacaran
This ground is protected. Photograph it, record it, leave it where it lies. On US federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009 makes collecting vertebrate fossils an offence, and penalties are real.
Australia
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This is remote ground. The closest other places on the map are a long way off.
