From the Nullarbor to the nuclear age: what fossils reveal about South Australia's past

The Ediacarans have vanished from the state but deep time is always waiting to burst through the surface

As an archaeologist working in the remote areas around Woomera and the Nullarbor Plain, my understanding of South Australia was first informed by rocks and soil. There were fossils of extinct boneless animals underfoot, caught in the shadows of a long-evaporated sea. The angles of deliberately fractured stone betrayed a human intent, the sharp blade discarded where it performed an unknown task. Beer cans lay rusting around the remains of a campfire. A mound ribboned with broad tyre prints marked a grave full of radioactive aeroplanes. On a dusty barracks window, someone had used short strips of masking tape to spell "Chernobyl". The adhesive still held, although the tape had become splintered and dry.

This was a landscape of fossils and trace fossils - the preserved impressions left by the passage of a living body through sediment - jostling for attention. On this land surface, South Australia presents an arc extending from the "death mask" fossils of early multicellular life to the human leap into the solar system. Sure, you might say, this could be said of many locations on Earth.