See The Beginnings Of Life On Earth In This New South Australia National Park

On April 27, 2023, South Australia’s Nilpena Ediacara National Park opens to the public and provides access to see rare fossils of some of the planet’s earliest known organisms. These organisms are said to be as strange as alien life with scientists debating whether they should be classified as the world’s first animals, or as algae, fungi, or an entirely distinct kingdom of life.

One of the world’s most important fossil sites

Nilpena Ediacara National Park is one of the most important fossil sites on the planet. The area is part of the traditional lands of the Adnya­math­anha Peo­ple and was proclaimed as a national park on June 17, 2021. Much of the outback here resembles the dry, red surface of Mars, but it was once an ancient sea. The national park is in the Flinders Ranges outback of South Australia, a 4.5-hour-drive north from the coastal capital city of Adelaide.

A South Australian geologist, Reg Sprigg, is credited with first finding fossils in the Nilpena area in 1946. However, the oral histories of the Adnyamathanha People show that the fossils have been known for far longer. The 1946 find was the first time an abundant community of soft-bodied organisms’ fossilized remains was documented in the world.

The fossils are rare because they are from the Ediacaran Period, the geological period that was named for where the fossils were found in South Australia’s Ediacara Hills. Fossils from this period are elsewhere in the world too, such as in Namibia, Russia, and in the eastern Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. However, the South Australia collection is the world’s most extensive and diverse.

Ediacaran fossils are unusual. They’re thought to be the first multi-celled organisms, the first to have both a front and a back end, the first to have a distinct head and a gut, and the first organisms to have signs of locomotion, predation, and sexual reproduction. They did not have shells or skeletons and no longer exist today.

The Ediacaran Period

The Ediacaran Period is the youngest geological period of the Neoproterozoic Era and was about 635 million to 541 million years ago. Before this period, the planet was covered in glaciers and ice sheets (scientists sometimes call it “Snowball Earth”) and life was single-celled or microscopic, mostly bacteria and algae.

The Ediacaran Period is characterized by tectonic activity that caused the super continent of Rodinia to break up and, though scientists aren’t sure of the cause, by rising levels of oxygen in the atmosphere and oceans. Both were critical for changing the nature of life on planet Earth and creating the organisms called, collectively, Ediacaran biota.

They became widespread across the world and more complex and diverse forms of life began proliferating. The fine sandstone of Nilpena Ediacara National Park preserved many of them.

Seeing the fossils of a half-billion-year-old sea

About 40 beds of fossils have been found within what is now the Nilpena Ediacara National Park. Some were found by pastoralist Ross Fargher, including on the floor of his wool shed.

The most important was discovered in 2016 by Dr. Mary Droser, professor of earth sciences at the University of California at Riverside, and her team. It was named Alice’s Restaurant Bed—since, as in the Arlo Guthrie song, “you can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant”—and has the fossilized remains of a remarkable diversity of ancient organisms and shows how they moved across the seafloor that was once here.

One of the fossils found here—and nowhere else in the world—is that of the Spriggina. It’s the first known creature to have both a front and a back end, perhaps even a head, and is thought to be one of the first predators ever to exist. Yes, the jellyfish-like creature was named for Reg Sprigg, who is credited with discovering it in 1946.

While the national park and the Flinders Ranges Ediacara Foundation have extensive protections in place, visitors can see some of these rare ancient fossils.

Due to the fragility and importance of the site, only guided tours are possible. A new interpretive center has been created in a historic blacksmith’s shop and houses the Alice’s Restaurant Bed. An audio-visual experience using 3D realistic animation shows what scientists think the area looked like a half billion years ago when it was the floor of an ancient shallow sea and teeming with a new form of life.

For more Ediacaran fossils

To see more fossils from the area and without the need to drive into the outback, visit the South Australian Museum in the city of Adelaide.

Stay tuned for whether Nilpena Ediacara National Park will be accepted by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, perhaps in 2026. And while you’re planning your trip to South Australia, learn more about Nilpena and its strange fossils in Sir David Attenborough’s documentary First Life.