Australia's lost world

by Michael Archer

"200 kilometers north-west of Mount Isa, Queensland, lies one of the most significant fossil deposits in the world - Riversleigh. Here, the remains of many thousands of weird and wonderful prehistoric animals have been superbly preserved in the limestone outcrops. There are marsupial lions, carnivorous kangaroos, 7-metre long pythons, primitive platypuses and early ancestors of the now extinct Tasmanian tiger. So important is this site to our understanding of what has happened to Australia and its living cargo over the last 25 million years that, in 1994, Riversleigh was inscribed on the World Heritage List.". "Michael Archer, Suzanne Hand and Henk Godthelp, the principal scientists on this remarkable excavation since 1976, explain in Australia's lost world the vast environmental and geographic changes that have occurred in this area since Australia broke away from the continent of Gondwana, and how the animals on board this raft evolved through the ages. As photographs and evocative a