Tag

sedimentary

61 posts

• 11 May 2026The Coal That Burned for 6,000 Years: The Burning Mountain of WingenBeneath a hill in New South Wales, a coal seam has been smouldering for at least 6,000 years—the oldest known continuously burning coal fire on Earth.
• 10 May 2026The Boiling Crater: The Hydrothermal Vents of the Panorama DistrictIn Western Australia's Pilbara Craton, 3.24-billion-year-old hydrothermal vent deposits preserve the earliest known evidence of seafloor hot springs and the microbial life they hosted.
• 10 May 2026The Reef That Wasn't: The Archaean Carbonates of the Steep Rock LakeIn a drained lakebed in Western Australia, 2.7-billion-year-old carbonate platforms preserve the oldest known stromatolite reefs—built by microbes before the continents had stabilised.
• 10 May 2026The Sunken River: The Turbidites of the Nankai TroughOff northwest Australia, sediment cascades from the continent into the deep Nankai Trough, building a 4-kilometre-thick fan of turbidite layers that record 15 million years of tectonic unravelling.
• 10 May 2026The Copper Cauldron: The Porphyry Deposits of the Mount Isa InlierIn northwest Queensland, the Mount Isa Inlier holds one of the world's great copper and lead-zinc provinces, forged 1.65 billion years ago by hydrothermal fluids rising through fractured Proterozoic c
• 10 May 2026The Petrified Thunder: The Shoalhaven River's Permian Glacial PavementsNear Nowra, NSW, 270-million-year-old glacial pavements preserve scratches and grooves etched by Permian ice sheets, recording when Australia lay frozen at the South Pole.
• 10 May 2026The Limestone Cathedral: The Naracoorte Cave SystemsBeneath South Australia's sheep pastures, the Naracoorte cave systems preserve a 500,000-year fossil record of Australia's vanished megafauna within layered sediment cones.
• 10 May 2026The Inland Reef: The Stromatolites of Lake CliftonIn the shallow waters of a Western Australian lake, living microbial reefs—thrombolites and stromatolites—build layered limestone structures nearly identical to the earliest known fossils on Earth.
• 10 May 2026The Drowned River: The Murray Canyon of the Continental ShelfBeneath the Southern Ocean off South Australia, the Murray River's ancient channel continues across the seafloor as a 150-kilometre submarine canyon, carved when the shelf was dry land.
• 10 May 2026The Breathing Coast: The Coorong's Holocene LagoonSouth Australia's Coorong lagoon records 7,000 years of sea-level change, where shifting sand barriers and evaporite minerals preserve a living record of the Holocene.
• 09 May 2026The Magnetic Heart: The Iron Ore of the Hamersley RangeIn Western Australia's Hamersley Range, 2.5-billion-year-old banded iron formations hold half the world's iron ore, recording when bacteria first oxygenated Earth's oceans.
• 09 May 2026The Diamond Sands: The Zircon Grains of the Jack HillsIn Western Australia's Jack Hills, 4.4-billion-year-old zircon crystals—the oldest known terrestrial material—preserve a record of Earth's first continents and a cool, wet surface only 150 million yea
• 09 May 2026The Salt That Bends: The Halite Diapirs of the Canning BasinBeneath the Kimberley's desert plains, ancient salt layers have flowed upward through 400 million years of rock, forming domes that trap oil, distort strata, and reshape the land above.
• 09 May 2026The Fossil River: The Cretaceous Channels of the Ceduna DeltaDeep beneath the Great Australian Bight, a 100-million-year-old river system—the Ceduna Delta—preserves 12 cubic kilometres of sediment and a record of Antarctica's final separation.
• 09 May 2026The Blood Wood: The Redgum Forests of the Murray RiverAlong the Murray River floodplains, ancient river red gums anchor a living geology—roots drinking from buried aquifers, trunks recording drought and flood in seasonal growth rings spanning a thousand
• 09 May 2026The Inverted Mountain: The Woodleigh Impact StructureBeneath the flat wheatlands of Western Australia, a 360-million-year-old impact crater preserves a record of Devonian catastrophe and the slow healing of a continent.
• 09 May 2026The Gold That Walked: The Witwatersrand Clues of the PilbaraIn Western Australia's Pilbara, 3.4-billion-year-old conglomerates preserve the earliest known placer gold deposits—river sediments that predate all life on land.
• 09 May 2026The Gold That Rained From Space: The Witwatersrand Conglomerates and the Bendigo ConnectionHow the Witwatersrand-style gold deposits of Western Australia's Yilgarn Craton preserve a 2.7-billion-year record of ancient rivers, meteorite bombardment, and the richest gold province on Earth.
• 09 May 2026The Buried Forest: The Yarraloola Tree Stumps of the Fortescue BasinIn the Fortescue Basin of Western Australia, 2.7-billion-year-old fossil tree stumps—among the oldest known—preserve the first tentative steps of life onto land.
• 09 May 2026The Fossilised Lightning: The Fulgurites of Lake LefroyIn the salt pans of Lake Lefroy, lightning strikes fuse desert sand into glass tubes that record the electrifying power of the Australian sky.
• 09 May 2026The Fossilised River: The Paleochannels of the Gawler CratonBeneath the arid plains of South Australia, 40-million-year-old buried river channels preserve gold, uranium, and a record of a wetter continent.
• 09 May 2026The Clay That Remembers: The Cambrian Shales of the Georgina BasinIn the Georgina Basin of Queensland, 500-million-year-old shales preserve trilobite exoskeletons so finely detailed that individual lenses in their compound eyes remain visible.
• 09 May 2026The Opalised Beak: The Cretaceous Inland Sea of Lightning RidgeBeneath the opal fields of Lightning Ridge lies the fossilised bed of a vast Cretaceous inland sea, where the bones of plesiosaurs, dinosaurs, and monotremes were replaced by precious opal over 100 mi
• 09 May 2026The Glass Highway: The Silcrete Pavements of the Lake Eyre BasinAcross the Lake Eyre Basin, ancient silcrete crusts—fused quartz pebbles bound by silica—preserve a 40-million-year record of deep weathering and aridification.
• 09 May 2026The Coral Staircase: The Limestone Terraces of the Eyre PeninsulaAlong the Eyre Peninsula's southern coast, a 25-kilometre staircase of calcarenite terraces records 1.6 million years of wobbling sea levels and the slow work of windblown shell fragments.
• 09 May 2026The Petrified Forest: The Nullarbor’s Eocene WoodlandsBeneath the Nullarbor Plain's limestone crust lie fossilized Eocene woodlands, where 45-million-year-old tree stumps and pollen reveal a lush temperate forest that once stretched across a continent on
• 08 May 2026The Gypsum Dunes: The White Sands of Lake EyreThe gypsum dunes of Lake Eyre, built from evaporite minerals over 30,000 years, reveal how Australia's driest landscape was once a vast inland sea shaped by Ice Age climates.
• 08 May 2026The Lake That Vanished: Willandra Lakes and the Mungo LandscapeAt Lake Mungo in New South Wales, a dried lake system preserves 50,000 years of human history and the fossilized bones of Australia's megafauna in layered lunette dunes.
• 08 May 2026The Sandstone Citadel: The Arnhem Land EscarpmentThe 1.6-billion-year-old Arnhem Land escarpment, a vast sandstone plateau shaped by ancient rivers and monsoonal rains, shelters some of Australia's oldest rock art and most isolated endemic species.
• 08 May 2026The Black Reef: The Proterozoic Manganese of Groote EylandtOn Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria, 1.5-billion-year-old manganese beds were concentrated into ores by Cretaceous seas, forming one of the world's richest manganese deposits.
• 08 May 2026The Long Rain: The Mound Springs of the Great Artesian BasinAcross the arid heart of Australia, water that fell as rain half a million years ago rises silently through artesian mound springs, sustaining desert oases and endemic life found nowhere else on Earth
• 08 May 2026The Recycled Range: The S-Type Granites of New EnglandExplore the S-type granites of the New England Orogen, where ancient seafloor sediments were recycled into massive granite plateaus 300 million years ago.
• 08 May 2026The Living Stripes: The Domes of PurnululuExplore the Bungle Bungles of Purnululu, where 360-million-year-old sandstone is preserved by a living skin of cyanobacteria and iron oxide.
• 08 May 2026The Fossil Cold: The Blockstreams of the Snowy MountainsExplore the periglacial landscapes of the Snowy Mountains, where frost-shattering and stone rivers preserve the record of Australia's recent glacial past.
• 08 May 2026The Fault-Valve Pulse: The Victorian GoldfieldsAn exploration of the tectonic forces and 'fault-valve' processes that created the world-class gold deposits of the Victorian Goldfields 400 million years ago.
• 08 May 2026The Equatorial Ice: The Elatina RhythmitesExplore the Elatina Formation in South Australia, where 635-million-year-old glacial rhythmites provide evidence for the 'Snowball Earth' phenomenon.
• 08 May 2026The Sky in the Silt: The Acraman Ejecta LayerThe 580-million-year-old Acraman impact in South Australia left a trail of shattered volcanic debris across hundreds of kilometers, potentially sparking a biological revolution.
• 08 May 2026The Exhumed Ocean: The Devonian Reef of the KimberleyExplore the Devonian Reef Complex of the Kimberley, a 375-million-year-old limestone fortress that preserves a perfectly exhumed Paleozoic seafloor.
• 08 May 2026The Granite Sentinel: The Batholith of Wilsons PromontoryAn exploration of the Devonian granite of Wilsons Promontory, the sculptural forces of spheroidal weathering, and the ancient land bridge of Bassianna.
• 08 May 2026The Polar Rift: The Otway Eumeralla FormationExplore the Eumeralla Formation of the Otway Ranges, where 110-million-year-old sandstones preserve the record of Australia's polar dinosaurs and the rifting of Gondwana.
• 08 May 2026The Scrapings of the Abyss: The Hodgkinson ProvinceAn exploration of the Hodgkinson Province in North Queensland, where Paleozoic subduction scraped the ocean floor into a chaotic, mineral-rich mountain range.
• 08 May 2026The Aerodynamic Glass: The Australite TektitesAn exploration of australites, the aerodynamic glass tektites formed by a massive meteorite impact 790,000 years ago and scattered across the Australian interior.
• 08 May 2026The Pitfall Archive: The Megafauna of NaracoorteExplore the Naracoorte Caves of South Australia, where limestone pitfall traps have preserved a 500,000-year record of Australia's lost Pleistocene megafauna.
• 08 May 2026The Carbonate Veneer: The Evolution of the Great Barrier ReefAn exploration of the Great Barrier Reef's geological history, where Miocene plate tectonics and Pleistocene sea-level shifts created a massive limestone archive built by life.
• 08 May 2026The Metallic Marrow: The Mount Isa InlierExploration of the Mount Isa Inlier in Queensland, where 1.6-billion-year-old tectonic collisions created one of the world's richest deposits of lead, zinc, and copper.
• 08 May 2026The Ghost in the Quartzite: The Ediacaran BiotaAn exploration of the Ediacara Hills in South Australia, where 550-million-year-old sandstones preserve the world's first large, complex, soft-bodied organisms.
• 08 May 2026The Rust of the Plateau: The Sydney Basin SandstonesAn exploration of the Blue Mountains' Triassic sandstone and the chemical iron-banding that shapes its iconic vertical cliffs.
• 08 May 2026The Dark Floor: The Bulldog Shale of the EromangaAn exploration of the Bulldog Shale, the dark Cretaceous mudstone that preserves the frozen marine world of Australia's ancient inland sea.
• 08 May 2026The Living Stone: The Stromatolites of Hamelin PoolExplore the living stromatolites of Hamelin Pool, Western Australia, where ancient microbial mats continue to build the stone structures that oxygenated the early Earth.
• 08 May 2026The Iron Breath: The Hamersley Banded FormationsAn exploration of the Hamersley Banded Iron Formations and the biological revolution that turned the ancient oceans into iron.
• 08 May 2026The Giant’s Scoria: The Conglomerates of Kata TjutaAn exploration of the massive conglomerate domes of Kata Tjuta and their origins as high-energy debris from an ancient, vanished mountain range.
• 08 May 2026The Antecedent Saw: The Finke RiverA study of the Finke River, an antecedent stream that has maintained its course through the MacDonnell Ranges for over 300 million years.
• 08 May 2026The Thumbprint of the Archean: The North Pole DomeA journey into the 3.5-billion-year-old North Pole Dome of the Pilbara, where the world's oldest microbial fossils are preserved in pristine chert.
• 08 May 2026The Glass Menagerie: The Opalized Fossils of the EromangaAn exploration of the rare geological process in the Eromanga Basin that transforms Cretaceous fossils into precious opal.
• 08 May 2026The Stone Fortress: The Kimberley PlateauAn exploration of the Kimberley Plateau’s ancient sandstone architecture, Devonian reef systems, and the deep mantle pipes of the Argyle diamond mine.
• 08 May 2026The Vertical Sea: The Deep Roots of UluruAn exploration of the tectonic forces and sedimentary history that created Uluru, the Red Centre's massive arkose monolith.
• 08 May 2026The Horizontal Silence: The Nullarbor PlainA study of the Nullarbor Plain, a vast Miocene limestone seabed that remains one of the flattest places on Earth.
• 08 May 2026The Drying Pool: The Devonian Fish of CanowindraThe Canowindra fossil site in New South Wales preserves a 360-million-year-old moment when thousands of Devonian fish were trapped in a drying pool.
• 08 May 2026The Buckling of the Center: The Alice Springs OrogenyExplore the Alice Springs Orogeny, the 150-million-year tectonic collision that created the iconic ridges of the MacDonnell Ranges.
• 08 May 2026The First Witnesses: The Zircons of Jack HillsThe Jack Hills zircons of Western Australia are the oldest known materials on Earth, revealing a surprisingly cool and watery planet just 150 million years after its birth.
• 08 May 2026The Great Rusting of the Hamersley RangeThe Banded Iron Formations of the Pilbara represent a global chemical transition, where ancient microbial life turned the oceans into a planet-scale rust deposit.