Tableland Central Australia, hundreds of miles northwest of Sydney, is today dominated by tall grasses and trees. But scientists recently discovered that some of the rusty rocks in the area hide traces of the lush rainforest that covered the area 15 million years ago during the Miocene epoch.
The area, McGraths Flat, is not the only Miocene deposit in Australia, but these new fossils are a boon of fossils due to their remarkable preservation. Over the past three years, paleontologists have excavated flowers, insects, and even a bird’s downy feathers.
discoveries of scientists, Posted Friday in the magazine science progress, helped reconstruct Australia’s Miocene rainforest in great detail, and the site “opens up a whole new field of exploration for Australian paleontology,” said Scott Hocknall, a paleontologist at the Museum of Queensland who was not involved in the research.
This work began when a local farmer from Central Tables in New South Wales reported to us that he had found fossil leaves in one of his fields. We visited the site to dig and were surprised to find more than just fossil leaves. 2/13 pic.twitter.com/2CRnSG6HbG
– Matthew R. McCurry (@MatthewRMcCurry) January 7 2022
Fifteen million years ago, a river carved through the forest, leaving Rainbow Lake (known as Billabong in Australia) in its wake at McGraths Flat. This stagnant pool, almost devoid of oxygen, keeps the scavengers in place, allowing plant matter and animal carcasses to accumulate. As iron-rich runoff from the nearby basalt mountains seeped into Billabong, the low pH of the pool caused iron precipitation and encapsulation of organic matter. As a result, the fossils at McGraths Flat have been preserved in a dense, iron-rich rock known as goethite.
Hocknoll said this method of fossilization is uncommon. Because high-quality fossils are rarely found in igneous rocks, paleontologists often overlook them. However, fossils from McGraths Flat show that goethite, which is common in Australia, can produce impressive fossils.
“There’s no shortage of goethite,” Huknoll said. “We are basically a country that rusts.”
Due to its iron-dyed origins, many McGraths Flat craters shimmer with a metallic sheen. In addition to virgin plants, goethite crawls with fossilized insects. Researchers discovered a miniature group of giant cicadas, dragonflies and parasitic wasps when they separated brick-colored stone slabs. And many are remarkably well-preserved – some ancient flies bear the detailed imprints of their compound eyes.
The site also spawned more than a dozen ancient spiders. While insects have strong exoskeletons, Michael Fries, a virologist and paleontologist at the University of Canberra and co-author of the study, likens spiders to “spongy bags of fluid.” As a result, the fossil record of spiders in Australia was virtually nonexistent prior to McGraths Flat.
The site also preserves soft tissues such as this fossilized feather. Soft tissue-preserving sites are extremely rare and are extremely important for our interpretation of past environments. 5/13 pic.twitter.com/jhLS9ujTfn
– Matthew R. McCurry (@MatthewRMcCurry) January 7 2022
The fossils have been so well preserved that paleontologists have been able to observe relationships between species — something that is often difficult to analyze from fossil sites, according to Matthew McCurry, curator of paleontology at the Australian Museum and lead author of the study. For example, the team observed parasites anchored in the tail of a fish and nematodes that infiltrated the long-horned beetle.
Fries used electron microscopy and micro-imaging techniques to examine the rainforest’s population. While photographing a fossilized saw bug, Friese discovered a mass of pollen on the head of the bee-like insect.
“We can tell which flower this sawfly has visited before it falls into the water and faces its abrupt end,” Freese said. “This would not be possible if the preservation quality was not high.”
The pollen also revealed that the rainforest was surrounded by drier environments, making it likely that McGraths Flat represents a patch of forest left over from once larger. According to McCurry, this makes sense given the Miocene climatic trends.
When these insects swarmed around iron-contaminated billabong, Australia was drifting north, away from Antarctica. As it traveled, its climate dried up dramatically, causing rainforests to retreat and leading to large-scale extinctions.
The researchers believe that McGraths Flat offers a glimpse into how this dramatic climate shift is affecting specific species within the rainforest ecosystem. For example, some insects found on McGraths Flat tolerated drier conditions while others are now only found in the remaining rainforest pockets of northern Australia.
Using SEM we were able to identify microfossils including fungi, spores and pollen. Based on pollen found in the sediments, we were able to date the site to the Miocene, between 11 and 16 million years ago. 8/13 pic.twitter.com/C3ZDPSzddQ
– Matthew R. McCurry (@MatthewRMcCurry) January 7 2022
“By studying these fossil ecosystems, we can see which species were best able to adapt to these changes,” McCurry said. “We can anticipate which ones are most at risk in terms of future changes.”
Freese said the McGraths Flat has been particularly useful for rebuilding ancient ecosystems because of the breadth of species that have preserved them.
“Our location is different because all the fossils are small, but in the end, I think it will tell us more about what happened in the ecosystem,” he said. “You don’t need to find a one-ton bird of terror to tell this story.”
This article originally appeared in . format New York times.
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