Australian flora and fauna time-line (snr)

Please also be aware of the debate ( where science does not agree) as to when some of the species like the marsupials, flora and humans arrived in Australia and where they came from.

We would like to thank the Geological Museum of the University of Western Australia for allowing us to photograph these fossils. And we would like to thank the State Museum of Western Australia for allowing us to use the pictures of the Gogo fish and the Diprotodon. We regret we can not copy pictures from the books below due to copyright laws. We have not intentionally distorted any facts or dates and apologize for any errors.

MYA = Million Years Ago

PRE CAMBIAN EON

4,500 MYA Meteorites hit the earth.

This meteorite was found at Millbillillie in Western Australia and is approx 4,550 million years old (around the same age as the planets). It could from the asteroid Vesta. It was photographed at the WA museum.

4,200-4,100 MYA Zircon crystals which were in the formation of the first crust have been identified in quartzites at Mt Narryer in the Murchison region of Western Australia. The rocks they were found in, are 3,600 million years old. These are some of the oldest crystals found anywhere on the Earth to date.

3,700 MYA the oldest rocks of the South West of Western Australia formed. These include some of the rocks in the Darling range consisting mostly of granite and later gneiss.

Bungle Bungles in the Kimberley WA

3,700-3,500 MYA

3,465 MYA Some scientists say that the first organisms (something alive) were thought to be Procaryotes, which lacked a nucleus, could not tolerate oxygen, and fed on organic molecules. They split into two, to reproduce themselves. This was before there was an ozone layer around the Earth.

Some other scientists say that Marble Bar in the Pilbara region in Western Australia has the oldest cyanobacteria (single celled organims) in the world. Other scientists say they are not fossils at all.

Iron rich rocks, Marble Bar

How Marble Bar looks now.

1,200 MYA worm-like soft-bodied multicellular organisms lived in what is now the Stirling Ranges in the south-west of WA. These fossils are twice as old as the Ediacaran fossils of South Australia. They lived on the floor of a shallow sea.

1,345 MYA Pieces of the Earth's crust collided together and formed the south-west coast of Western Australia. Granite was formed and older granite was metamorphosed (changed) into gneiss.
Gondwana's crust broke in a north to south direction and Greater India drifted away.

1,650 MYA is how old the granite on Mt. Augustus has been dated, this is older than Uluru.

Mount Augustus

Approx 1-1.8 billion years ago Some scientists believe that there were Eucaryotes which had a central nucleus capable of transmitting complex genetic messages with DNA. Some of the earliest fossils of eukaryotic cells come from the Bungle Bungle Dolomite in the Kimberley, WA. They are dated at 1500million years old.

Eukaryotes and over 30 types of microfossils have been found by scientists in the Bitter Springs Formation of central Australia, dating 850 million years old. Organisms recorded here included bacteria, cyanobacteria and algae which occur within stromatolitic structures (like in the photos above). They can still be found on Earth in much the same form. (See text References below to view a picture of these microfossils).

Also at this time it is believed that most of Gondwana went through glaciations, where large parts of the country were covered in ice sheets.

800 MYA Australia the continent as we know it was beginning to take form but we were still in two parts- West and East. The land looked nothing like it looks today.

750 MYA Rodinia (the oldest known super continent that covered most of the Earth's landmass) began to break apart into eight smaller plates (which later re-assembled as Pangea). Go Here to see a map of this http://www.scotese.com/Rodinia3.htm

600 MYA Sea jellies called Mawsonites, Annelid worms, Tribrachidium's, Parvancorina's and relatives of corals known as sea pens have been found in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia in sandstone. Uluru in Central Australia is formed. It was part of a mountain range that has since weathered and eroded.

The Varange Ice Age covered the whole planet in ice sheets several kilometres thick over the land and oceans in some places.

590 MYA The Stirling Range in Western Australia was formed when the Earth's crust buckled.

550 MYA A new supercontinent called Gondwana formed probably by breaking away from an even bigger supercontinent. This new continent included Australia, Antarctica, Greater India, New Zealand, South America, Africa and parts of South-east Asia.

545 MYA to 298MYA PALEOZOIC ERA

In this Era we have;

545 MYA to 490 MYA CAMBRIAN Period = Molluscs and sponge reefs, trilobites (Xystridura saint-smith was a common one) and brachiopods found along the continental shelf, the most familiar of this group is the Lingula.

First appearance of vertebrate (shell and skeleton). Chlorophytes are a type of green algae that were found in great numbers.

Archaeocyathids were a soft tissue animal that grew in shallow, warm water. They became extinct before the Ordovician period some 20-30 million years after they arrived.

Echinoderms which were spinney skinned animals were represented by several different groups. Some brachiopods (articulate and inarticulate), archaeocyathids, and many trilobites also became extinct. During the middle Cambrian period eastern Australia was covered in sea.

490 MYA to 434 MYA ORDOVICIAN Period = New Trilobites and brachiopods, molluscs, and graptolites a colonial soft bodied animal living in tubes, some attached to the sea bottom, were in great numbers. Bryozoans which were colonial animals fed by a ring of tentacles surrounding a central mouth. First appearance of corals (not the corals we have today).

The seas in the east retreated.

170 new families of animals was added to the worlds catalogue.

Ostracoderms are the earliest vertebrate fish found in Australia in the Northern Territory. They were jawless vertebrates which have their bodies enclosed by bony armour. Conodonts were an animal microscopic to 3 millmetres long in size and were found from the Cambrian to the Triassic periods.

As this time came to an end central and north-western Australia were being elevated. The sediments were being squeezed to form mountains.

434 MYA to 410 MYA SILURIAN Period = Trilobites, brachiopods, molluscs, echinoderms (including sea stars and crinoids), graptolites, corals and eurypterids (like horseshoe crabs of today).

First appearance of land animals (centipedes and spiders) and vascular plants. Debate still rages between scientists as to age of the first plants. Baragwanathiea Longifolia is the name of the plant found near Seymour in Victoria in 1875. Arthropods called Pterygotus (sea scorpions) had pincher like claws and would have been a predator.

Photographed at the Western Australian Museum.

This insect is called an euthycarcinoid Kalbarria brimmellae. It is approx 430 million years old and was found in the Murchison River Gorge Kalbarri in the Pilbara, WA.

Coral reefs formed which today gives us limestone formations. Crinoids became abundant.

410 MYA to 354 MYA DEVONIAN Period = Brachiopods, molluscs and echinoderms: coral reefs were widespread.

First appearance of land vertebrates (amphibians such as Metaxygnathus ), tree-sized land plants and insects. There were seven different groups of pteridophytes, and lycopods (plants), which grew in damp places and were abundant. Fossilised plants from this time are very rare because of the sparse nature of the Devonian flora.

A greater diversity of fishes. There were 5 main types of fish found in the Devonian period, four with jaws and one without. This is a Griphognathus whitei found at the Gogo Station Western Australia.

Photographed at the Western Australian Museum.

Stromatoporoids were of great importance during the Devonian period. They were reef builders. Large stromatoporoid structures have been found in Western Australia. Scientists are still trying to discover just what type of animals they were.

Trilobites were declining and many forms had become extinct. Tasmania was raised up out of the sea as mountains formed. Volcano's were wide spread.

A major extinction occurred.

354 MYA to 298 MYA CARBONIFEROUS Period = Brachiopods which were very important in this era for dating. Bivalves and gastropods were often found in the same area as brachiopods. Molluscs, echinoderms and corals.

Forests widespread - first appearance of conifer plants.

Winged insects found in Tasmania.

Trilobites were a rare life form and were declining.

This period started warm but by the middle of this period glaciations begin to spread in the east but true ice sheets did not form until the Permian period. Plants would have experienced extreme cold stress.

Shark teeth and scales have been found in Western Australia from this age.

By half way through this period Victoria and southern New South Wales was raised up out of the sea. Large volcano's continued.

298 MYA to 251 MYA PERMIAN Period = Molluscs, brachiopods and echinoderms. First appearance of cycads, ammonites, mammal-like reptiles and beetles.

Extinction of some corals and trilobites.

280 MYA glaciations occurred, where large sheets of ice covered Victoria, NSW, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia as far as the Kimberley in the north.

The Glossopteris tree survived this cold. Conifers have been found at the end of this period. Coal deposits in swampland forests occurred in Collie, Western Australia.

Photographed at the Rockingham Environment Centre Rockingham. This specimen was not dated.

One species of amphibian has been found called Bothriceps Australia. The early amphibians also suffered because of the cold conditions and their numbers have drastically reduced.

Beetle, caddis flies, scorpion flies, lacewings and leaf hopper fossils have been found that would have come out in the brief summer.

In Western Australia a few small sharks have also been found. A single cup coral was in the Permian time.

In the middle of this period more volcanic activity happened.

The end of the Permian period saw the last of the trilobites on Earth and a warmer climate.

Crinoids (left), Coral (below), Bryozoa (top right). These have been dated at the Permian period. Photographed from the Geological Museum Perth

260MYA Echinoderms Jimbacrinus bostocki and Neocamptocrinus millyitensis lived in a shallow sea in the Gascoyne region seen here in the photo on the right. There are also crinoids and sea stars in this rock. Photographed at the Western Australian Museum.

250mya there was a great extinction of >90% of known life forms

95% of Australia's geological history had now passed.

It is also important to remember that Australia had different animals and plants at different times than what has been found in the Northern hemisphere.

251 MYA to 65 MYA MESOZOIC ERA

In this era we have;

251 MYA to 205 MYA TRIASSIC Period = Molluscs, brachiopods, lungfish and crustaceans such as horseshoe crabs.
Flora spread to the south of Gondwana.
Ammonites and land reptiles increased in numbers.

This goniatite (left) and ammonite (right) were found North of Geraldton in Western Australia. Photographed from the Geological Museum Perth

Labyrinthodontia's and other amphibians now became greater in number. Ichthyosaurs (large marine reptile) found in Blina Shale of Western Australia.

The late Triassic period saw the beginning of the dinosaurs for Australia. Fossilised Lepidosaurs such as a Mosasaur (swimming lizard) have been found, where a single fore paddle has been recovered from Gingin, Western Australia. There were many lakes and swamps in this period and the conditions were now warmer.

Australia gets its first cockroach, and fossilised butterflies, cicadas, praying mantises, and dragonflies have been found in Queensland and Sydney.

250 MYA the sandstone Bungle Bungles of Western Australia were uplifted by the faults of the area and near by at Piccaninny Creek a meteorite hit.

Also 250 MYA the Gascoyne region in Western Australia was a shallow ocean basin that filled with sediment which later became compressed to form layers of sandstone and shale.

A major extinction occurred

205 MYA to 141 MYA JURASSIC Period = This is a period where swamps, lakes and floodplains are over much of eastern Australia. Molluscs, brachiopods, crustaceans and ammonites. New dinosaurs were ichthyosaurs and marine retiles (plesiosaurs). The Triassic period had theropods (carnivores) and palaeopods. But now gigantic sauropods (herbivores) were known in the Jurassic like the Rhoetosaurus brownei found in Durham Downs in south-eastern Queensland. It was a very large animal over 15 metres long and about 4 metres high at the shoulder.

clipart pictures- not accurate.

Bivalves have also been found in different parts of Australia this picture is of 3 different bivalves found in Western Australia. At this time Bivalves were high in number.

Photographed from the Geological Museum Perth

The labyrinthodonts (amphibians) had virtually disappeared.

A millipede fossil has also been found from the Evergreen Formation of Queensland.
Only tracks have been found of meat eating dinosaurs in this period.

This is folded banded iron formation from the Pilbara region dated at 200 mya.

Photographed at the Western Australian Museum

Conifer plants increased, and a fern called Cladophlebis has been found in such abundance that it has been called the 'Jurassic weed'. This sample here below was found in sandstone in Broome W.A.

Forests of pines had an under story of ferns, cycads and other plants.

Photographed from the Western Australian Museum Perth

This Belemnite was found in Western Australia and was a squid like creature in the middle Jurassic Period.

Photographed at the Western Australian Museum

141 MYA to 65 MYA CRETACEOUS Period = For Australia it was the age of the dinosaurs, and flowering plants. Australia once again was drifting towards the polar region. It is not the beginning of an ice age but there are long dark winters. As the supercontinent continues to break up Australia is flooded by rising oceans which makes Australia isoloated from Antarctica with only a small amount of land above the sea level.
Much of inland eastern Australia, where a basin had formed, was covered in sea.

Reptiles and pterosaurs are from this period too along with sea turtles and huge aquatic lizards called mosasaurs. Molluscs (bivalves, ammonites, gastropods), brachiopods and crustaceans. Other sea animals were sea stars, crinoids, and brittle stars. Birds spread further. First appearance of snakes and monotremes (echidna like animals). *Australia's most complete dinosaur that has been discovered is the iguanodont Muttaburrasarus langdoni,* found from the Muckunda Formation of central Queensland. Other dinosaurs were the ankylosaur Minmi paravertebra that was built like a tank, hypsilophodonts Fulgurotherium australiae have been identified from a single femur bone.**
Marine reptiles like the ichythyosaurs were more dolphin-like, turtles such as the Notochelone costata which was less than 1 metre long, and the plesiosaurs and pliosaurs such as the Kronosaurus queenslandicus were the dominant animals in the seas. *Photographed at the Western Australian Museum Perth*	*This Plesiosaurid was found near Kalbarri in Western Australia.*
Only two sauropod remains have been found in Australia and only one has been named - Austrosaurus. The theropods were the Rapator ornitholestoides, a type of Allosaurus and a Kakuru kujani which has been found from the Maree Formation at Andamooka in South Australia, and it was about the size of a heron bird today.
The only remains of Australian pterosaurs (flying reptiles) comes from Queensland and shows that they had a wingspan of about 2 metres and were marine creatures. The first evidence of birds is from feathers found from Gippsland in Victoria and they have not yet been identified as to what bird they are. Photographed here on the right is the ulna bone from a pterosaur. *Photographed at the Western Australian Museum.*

A dragonfly has been found in limestone in the Flinders River beds of northern Queensland and a fossilised flea along with other insects were present.
Some scientist say placental and marsupial mammals had developed.
A 110 million year old platypus fossil has recently been found in Lightning Ridge in NSW. It is the oldest mammal fossil known from Australia, its name is Steropodon, and was about the size of a badger.

135 million years ago a rift developed in Gondwanas crust slowly tearing from north to south and Greater India drifted away from Australia as a result.

120 MYA Antarctica starts to split from Australia.

95 MYA rivers were established over the south west of Western Australia.

Extinction of ammonites, dinosaurs, plesiosaurs (marine reptiles), ichthyosaurs and pterosaurs near the end of the Cretaceous.

65 MYA to Today CAINOZOIC ERA

After the Cretaceous era a warm moist subtropical climate was in Australia.

The 'age of the mammals'.

In this era we have -

65 MYA to 1.8 MYA TERTIARY period The south west of Western Australia was moist and tropical causing rain bearing westerly winds lasting for 30 million years. It was at this time that a huge rise in sea level occurred, flooding large areas of the south coast.

One tertiary platypus Obdurodon insignis has been found in Australia and the only tertiary echidnas Zaglossus robusta are similar to the long beaked echidnas still surviving in New Guinea. Fossilised bandicoots have been found in this period from central Australia. Very few teeth remains from wombats have been found. The oldest dasyurid (carnivorous marsupial) is the Ankotarinja tirarensis.
The oldest thylacine known from Australia is in the late Miocene called Thylacinus potens. Another carnivorous marsupial was the marsupial lion Thylacoleo and the Wakaleo. Fossil koalas have been found from South Australia. And possums, some of the oldest fossilised forms are found in the Oligocene era (34-24 MYA). Some kangaroo species that were around in the middle to late Tertiary are now entirely extinct. Procoptodon was one of the early species of kangaroo's and the largest species to have ever lived, some stood over 3 metres tall and grazed among trees.
Small rodents and bats came from southeast Asia.

The flora was remnant of the Gondwana times.

major extinction

65 MYA to Approx 15 MYA PALEOCENE Period = Molluscs (bivalves and gastropods) and sea urchins from the Echinoids family were common at this time, and crustaceans. Mammals and birds spread. First appearance of placental mammals such as whales, seals, rodents, bats, horses, and primates (monkeys, apes and hominids).

55-34 MYA the oldest known Banksia fossils of Australia have been found in the Kennedy Ranges in Western Australia.

Photographed Western Australian Museum

Approx 45-50 MYA Antarctica finally splits completely away from Australia. Australia now stands alone surrounded by oceans.

40 MYA Western Australia's climate was quite tropical.

The first fossil records of Eucalypts are 35 million years old.

25 million years ago Australia's climate was Mediterranean and there were many freshwater lakes in central Australia.

At the same time on the coast of Eastern Australia many volcanoes spewed out basaltic lavas hundreds of metres thick.

Photographed at the Rockingham Environment Centre in Rockingham. It was not dated.

Many fishes teeth have been found from the middle Tertiary era showing that snapper, whiting, flounder, flathead and toadfishes were all in Australia at that time. Turtles and tortoises have been found in deposits including the giant horned turtle Meiolania.

A frog species called Australobatrachus ilius was the first frog fossil to be found. Some insects have been found in mud around lakes and some in resin which include beetles, millipedes, mites and a spider.

Scleromorphy plants which are like the eucalypts and acacia's of today began. Plants in Australia developed rapidly at this time including such plants as Grevellias and Casuarina's.

Approx 23 million years ago Diprotodontoids were from the family Diprotodontoidea and were probably browsers, perhaps eating shrubs and low trees or water plants. Fossils of Diprotodontoids have been found in Tasmania.

Supplied by the Western Australian Museum

15 MYA to 1.8 MYA NEOGENE period = Australian continental plate collided with the Sunda and Pacific regions (Indo-Malay).

The Simpson Desert area had thick rainforests 15 million years ago.

Bird fossils of a owlet nightjar, pelicans, grebes, ducks and flamingoes fossils have been found because the lakes made a good preserving ground. Another impressive bird was the Mihirungs which means 'giant emu' but they are not related to the emus.

Lizard fossils have rarely been found but one that has been found is called Megalania and was a large goanna which may have grown to 5 metres long and survived into the Pleistocene time.

About 15 million years ago the Australian continental plate collided with the Sunda and Pacific regions, this meant that a lot of plants and animals from south eastern Asia and northern Australia could interchange between places.
A 5 metre long lung fish from Queensland that is still around today was also from 15 million years ago.
These rodent bones are approx 4million years old found in a cave in the south-west of WA.

Photographed at the Western Australian Museum

By 2 MYA desert conditions that may have been worse than what they are today meant that only the plants and animals that could tolerate such dryness and nutrient deficient soils were able to colonise and develop. Volcanoes erupted in central and eastern Australia. No one plant or animal has been able to dominate allowing for more diversity.

1.8 MYA to 10,000 years ago QUATERNARY PERIOD

1.8 MYA PLEISTOCENE Period = Diprotodon ( the largest marsupial that ever lived looked like a rhinoceros) have been found at this time in the Mammoth cave in Margaret river W.A.

From the Western Australian Museum

Large birds similar to the Mallee fowl, pheasant and some eagles have been found. Giant echidna type animals like this Zaglossus hacketti seen here was found in the Mammoth caves in Margaret River Western Australia.

Photographed from the Western Australian Museum

Crocodile fossils of different species have been found in different places, some resembling saltwater croc's. Some crocodile fossils were found earlier in the Tertiary period but way after the croc's in the northern hemisphere had died out.

Wonambi naracoortensis a giant python lived in the south-west of Western Australia survived through to the Pleistocene period.

Photographed from the Western Australian Museum

The Chuditch or Western Quoll Dasyurus geoffroyii has been around from the last 1.6 million years and is still alive today.
Bandicoots or Quenda Isoodon obsulus and a Ghost Bat Macroderma gigas have been found from 1.6 million years ago and are still alive today.
Quokkas were also around 1.6 million years ago on the mainland but died out around 10,000 years ago.

Weathering and erosion soon begins to wear at the new formations made by the volcanoes. The dingo and the human arrives.
Caves and the Pinnacles in Western Australia were formed from limestone.

During the last 1 million years the sea level has risen and fallen as the polar icecaps have contracted and expanded. So the position of the Western Australian coast line has shifted both eastward as the sea level rose, and westward, as the sea level fell. This left sand dunes that later fossilised and turned to limestone.

Major extinction of most of the giant megafauna (wildlife) like the Procoptodon, Diprotodon.

18,000 years ago during the late Quaternary period there was a world wide ice age, reducing temperatures and water was trapped as glaciers.

15,000 years ago was the last major arid period in Western Australia.

10,000 years ago to today HOLOCENE period Where we are living today and you were born.

Aboriginals had encounters with animals such as the mihirungs (type of giant emus) as recent as 8,000 years ago. Also a giant python named the Wonambi (photo above) and giant reptiles similar to the Gould's sand goanna were also recorded by the aboriginals.

With the arrival of settlers, fire and their animals and plants, greater changes occurred to the flora and the fauna probably more than all the previous changes of time combined.

As time goes on changes will be made to this basic list of Australian events. Errors will have been made and we will all grow in a greater understanding of life in Australia as more fossils are found and researched.

Please go and look at your library for these books that we used for our references to see pictures about what you have read here! And if you are in Perth please go and visit the dinosaur exhibitions at the Western Australian Museum, entry is free!

"Ancient Australia" By Robin Birch Macmillan Education Australia PTY Ltd  Library
"Prehistoric Australia "By Brian Mackness Golden Press Publishers-Library
"The Greening of Gondwana" By Mary E. White   Reed books PTY Ltd-Library
"Geology and Landforms of the South West" By Lain Copp Dept Conservation and Land Management-Bookstall
"Geological Museum" University of Western Australia.
Australian Geological Survey Organisation.
Geological Society of Australia.
Western Australian Museum.
"Dinosaurs of Australia" By John Long.   Reed Publishers.-Library
"Walking with Dinosaurs" by BBC- Video. The Antarctica episode covers Australia.
CSIRO -Scientriffic magazine. March- April issue 2002
Digging up deep time - fossils, dinosaurs and megabeasts from Australia's distant past By Paul Willis and Abbie Thomas.

Please also see our sections on 'Dinosaurs and fossils' and 'Ancient Australian Plants'