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410 Gone

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We recognise the traditional custodians of the Riversleigh section of the Australian Fossil Mammal sites (lower Gulf region of Queensland)—the Waanyi people, and pay our respects to Elders past and present.

    The Waanyi people know this region as their spiritual and sacred Boodjamulla (Rainbow Serpent) Country and continue to feel a deep sense of responsibility for the safekeeping of this place. The Waanyi people's connection to the landscape is maintained through cultural practice on their traditional homeland—their strong association to this Country was recognised through the determination of Native Title in 2010.

    UNESCO logo

    The Australian Fossil Mammal Sites consists of two distinct areas listed as a combined World Heritage property—these are the Riversleigh section, north west of Mount Isa in north Queensland, and the Naracoorte section in South Australia.

    Map Open larger image

    Both Riversleigh and Naracoorte are superb examples of the key stages of evolution of Australia’s unique wildlife and meet two of the ten World Heritage criteria:

    1. Outstanding examples representing major stages of earth’s history
    2. Outstanding examples representing significant ongoing ecological and biological processes.

    The two sites were jointly inscribed on the World Heritage List as the Australian Fossil Mammal Sites (AFMS) in 1994.

    Management of the Riversleigh section of the Australian Fossil Mammal Sites (Riversleigh) is coordinated through a partnership between the Australian Government, the Queensland Government and the Waanyi peoples.

    Riversleigh is mostly within Boodjamulla National Park. See Boodjamulla National Park, for information about Boodjamulla visitor information, including park safety updates.

    Riversleigh fossil site – Queensland’s World Heritage areas

    The Australian Fossil Mammal Sites consists of two distinct areas listed as a combined World Heritage property—the Riversleigh section, north west of Mount Isa in north Queensland, and the Naracoorte section in South Australia. Learn…

    There's been an amazing amount of work done at Riversleigh over the last 40 odd years now in terms of trying to understand these extraordinary fossils that tell the story of the mammals of early Australia and so that that's a very rich fauna that we've still got so much more to learn about.

    World Heritage means the site itself has Outstanding Universal Value so it's of value to

    all humanity. Queensland has five world heritage sites along with its partner in Naracoote in

    South Australia, the Australian fossil mammal sites, are the only fossil sites in Australia

    that are recognised for their extraordinary value. So David Attenborough has acclaimed

    Riversleigh is one of the top five fossil fields in the world, so absolutely amazing. They're challenging to get out but they are just the most beautiful, preserved specimens that you could ever imagine.

    Hit a lump of rock with a hammer, the two pieces fall apart and there is a shining perfect tooth or shell or bone, a fossil. There are a few hearts that don't beat the faster at such an enchanting moment, mine certainly does. But just imagine if that fossil was not a well-known one but of an animal that hitherto had no one had ever known had existed. A giant kangaroo that ate not grass but flesh. A wombat-like creature the size of rhinoceros. Creatures so strange that you have

    to invent crazy names for them like Thingodonta or Weirdodonta. Well just such a thing happened at Riversleigh in the remote bush country of north western Queensland. There over 200 species of mammal were discovered that had never been known before and as well as them there were insects and fish and amphibians and reptiles. So to find somewhere where there was a representative sample of land living animals is an infinitesimally rare chance such places are the real treasure houses of palaeontology. Riversleigh is one of them.

    For hundreds of millions of years extreme heat from deep within the earth's core has caused convection currents to move the world's land masses around the globe as they float on a semi-liquid mantle. This process is called continental drift and helps explain how most plants and animals are spread around the Earth.

    Our story begins 200 million years ago, a time when all the world's land masses are joined into a single super continent called Pangea. Around 150 million years ago, Pangaea splits into two smaller supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana. Gondwana is like a giant jigsaw puzzle consisting of present-day Africa, Australia, Antarctica, Arabia, South America, New Zealand, India and Madagascar. In the landscape of Australia today, plants animals and ancient fossils provide connections to these other continents.

    Across Gondwana, dinosaurs of all descriptions roam through forests of conifers, cycads and ferns whose descendants still grow in the Wet Tropics today. At this stage Antarctica is the core of Gondwana but it isn't the ice-clad continent we think of today. Fossils of now extinct trees show us it

    was once covered in lush green forests.

    Australia, Antarctica and South America can be thought of as triplets by studying fossils and the

    living plants and animals on these three continents, the connections through deep time become

    very obvious. Incredibly, the oldest fossil eucalypts come from Patagonia in South America

    where fossils of platypus have also been found.

    Two and a half million years ago, the global climate becomes unstable as ice ages come and go. During ice ages, the Earth's climate becomes drier and cooler. The Earth's north and south poles increase in size due to the abundance of floating ice. As a result, global sea levels fall. When the climate cycle warms this ice melts and sea levels rise once more. Australia's now extinct mega-fauna live during this time. Marsupial lions, wombats the size of rhinos and some of the world's largest birds.

    We've had some breakthroughs recently in our ability to actually date things, to get an age for them, using some radiometric techniques that have been developed in the University of Melbourne. And what they're doing is, they're actually using cave structures, speleothems like stalagmites or flowstones, and they're dating those with great precision. So now we can actually go to sites that have got fossils and that have got speleothems cave structures in them and get a date for those rocks that contain those fossils. So that makes it so much easier for us to be able to make sense of the different sites in different positions.

    Here we are standing on rocks that were formed in a giant lake about 25 million years ago. I'd probably be drowning at the moment. When you actually start to add up all the strange new kinds of animals that came out of these rocks and Riversleigh, it had quadrupled our understanding of the history of the animals of Australia, just from this one place. It links together the animals we have today with their past, and enables us to draw lines through time to start to make predictions about what's going to happen in the future. Which helps us also focus on how to conserve endangered animals today, by understanding where they've come from. So not only can we study extraordinary fossils, but we can look at the processes that have turned living animals into fossils that will be exploring future generations and every year we come back more new and exciting animals turn up. This place is magic.

    The Outstanding Universal Value is not is not just in the fossils but in this extraordinary ancient landscape, geologically ancient but also culturally ancient and there's lots of things we need to learn about it's still so much more to learn. I just love it I love the outback, I love the openness, that's what brings me back.

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    First Nations partners

    First Nations occupation dates back at least 17,000 years and may extend beyond 30,000 years. The Waanyi people know this country as Boodjamulla or the Rainbow Serpent Country. They believe Boodjamulla—the Rainbow Serpent—formed the Lawn Hill Gorge area and created the permanent spring water. Lawn Hill Gorge is a sacred place used only for ceremonial and celebratory purposes. The Waanyi believe that if you tamper with the water, pollute it or take it for granted, the Rainbow Serpent will leave and take all the water with him.

    The Waanyi people were hunters and gatherers. Men hunted while the women and children gathered edible plants and fruit. Boomerangs and spears were used for hunting while grass-woven nets were made for catching fish.

    Boodjamulla Country provided plenty of food for the Waanyi people. Their staple diet consisted of fish (wirigatyigatyi), turtle (wabungara), kangaroo (mailadyi), and goanna (dyambapna), and was supplemented with berries, mussels (mulla mulla), pandanus fruit (bulalula), wild banana and cabbage palms cores (wodidy). They used stones to grind lily seeds for damper and used earth ovens (dundee) of hot coals and rocks for cooking.

    During the wet season the Waanyi people would gather under overhanging rocks and in caves, while in the dry months they would camp in paperbark shelters along the creek banks. They made paperbark canoes for travelling short distances and used a shield-shaped wooden dish, called a coolaman, to carry babies, prepare food or to transport fire and food.

    Evidence of Aboriginal occupation can still be found today in the remaining mussel middens, grindstone relics and rock art. Waanyi Elders have interpreted some of these sites, providing visitors with an understanding of their traditional lifestyle.

    Values of the World Heritage area

    Riversleigh was once a lush rainforest scattered with lime mineral-rich freshwater pools. Some of the world’s most outstanding fossils from the Oligocene period to the Miocene period (10–30 million year ago) have been uncovered at Riversleigh. Visitors can discover the unique story of the evolution of Australia’s wildlife by seeing some of these fossilised animals along the walking track at D Site and reading the track-side illustrated signs that tell stories of past prehistoric mega-fauna.

    Riversleigh Open larger image

    D Site

    © Mark Nemeth
    A fossil of a Mekosuchus Open larger image

    A fossil of a Mekosuchus, a goanna-like crocodile that climbed trees

    A fossilised crushed skull of a Baru wickeni Open larger image

    A fossilised crushed skull of a Baru wickeni, a cleaver-headed crocodile.

    Palaeontological surveys at Riversleigh have uncovered exceptional examples of the evolution of Australia’s wildlife. Fossil discoveries have revealed a deeper understanding of an ancient and mysterious world where carnivorous kangaroos, predatory pouched lions, giant flightless birds and tree-climbing crocodiles once roamed.

    The Barawertornis tedfordi was a huge, cassowary-sized flightless bird. The fossilised vertebra and gizzard stones of an even bigger bird species Dromornis murrayi, affectionately known as ‘Big Bird’, can be seen in a large limestone rock beside the Riversleigh Fossil Trail.

    The 5m-long, cleaver-headed Baru wickeni had huge dagger-like teeth and lived around Riversleigh’s freshwater pools about 16-24 million years ago. A fossilised crushed skull of a crocodile can be seen along the Riversleigh Fossil Trail.

    Wakaleo oldfieldi was a pouched lion about the size of a German shepherd dog. These tree-climbing carnivores had moon-shaped blades on their premolars used for cutting up the flesh and bone of its prey.

    Known as Australia’s killer kangaroo, Ekaltadeta was able to slice through bone as well as muscle, and probably galloped rather than hopped. Ekaltadeta was just one of the strange kinds of kangaroos that lived in Riversleigh’s ancient rainforest.

    Illustrations of mega-fauna Open larger image

    The ancient and mysterious mega-fauna that once roamed Riversleigh

    © Illustrations by Jane Jehne

    Riversleigh has the richest fossil mammal deposits in Australia and have generously contributed to the world’s knowledge of prehistoric mammal communities.

    Riversleigh’s environment has changed dramatically over time and understanding how these changes occurred and their influence on the animals and plants that lived here, will assist in managing this landscape into the future.

    Visitors can gain further insight about Riversleigh at the Riversleigh Fossil Discovery Centre in Mount Isa.

    A full description of the Outstanding Universal Values of the property, including the criteria and attributes, can be found on the Australian Government website.

    Did you know?

    • A very small marsupial lion Microleo attenboroughi lived and hunted in the wet forests that dominated Riversleigh about 18 million years ago. The house cat-sized mammal was named for naturalist David Attenborough in appreciation of his support for Riversleigh’s World Heritage listing.
    • Riversleigh is regarded as one of the most significant palaeontological sites yet discovered anywhere in the world. Its fossil bat record of 35 species is considered the richest in the world.
    • A near-complete skeleton of a small, fox-sized thylacine, a carnivorous marsupial distantly related to the 'Tasmanian Tiger’ has been found at Riversleigh. It is the only skeleton of a thylacine species other than the Tasmanian Tiger discovered to date. Thylacines were the main mammalian predators, with over ten species known from northern and central Australia.
    • 'Fangaroo' was a small herbivorous kangaroo with huge canine teeth. Perhaps it used them for defence against predators such as the Giant Rat-kangaroo, Ekaltadeta, a kangaroo that ate meat!
    • Mekosuchus was a goanna-like crocodile that climbed trees.
    • Riversleigh was once a very wet rainforest that became more arid as the ancient Gondwanan land masses separated and the Australian continent moved north.

    Management of the Riversleigh section of the Australian Fossil Mammal Site

    Management arrangements for Riversleigh involve the Waanyi People, the Australian Government and the Queensland Government. The Australian Government funds the employment of an Executive Officer and establishment and operation of an advisory committee.

    Advisory Committee

    Riversleigh has one advisory committee—the Riversleigh World Heritage Advisory Committee (RWHAC).

    See the Terms of Reference for the Riversleigh World Heritage Advisory Committee (PDF, 332.9KB) .

    Advisory committees for World Heritage areas provide advice to the Australian and Queensland Government Ministers responsible for World Heritage matters and assist in meeting obligations under the World Heritage Convention and the Federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. These obligations include identifying, protecting, conserving, presenting and transmitting the Outstanding Universal Value of the World Heritage property for future generations.

    The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, in partnership with the Waanyi People, through the Boodjamulla Cooperative Management Council, are responsible for the day-to-day management of Riversleigh.

    If you would like to be informed of future opportunities to be involved in the advisory committees or for any further information, email world.heritage@detsi.qld.gov.au.

    Communiques

    Following each meeting of the Riversleigh World Heritage Advisory Committee, the Chair prepares a communique for the Queensland and Commonwealth Ministers responsible for World Heritage matters. Communiques outline high-level discussions and key recommendations of committees and since 2016, have been published here as soon as they are available:

    For further information email world.heritage@detsi.qld.gov.au.

    Resources

    Related information