Nilpena Ediacara National Park created in 2021 in Flinders Ranges as home to famous fossil imprints
The rugged landscape of Nilpena Ediacara National Park in South Australia's Flinders Ranges, home to the world-renowned Ediacaran fossil imprints (inset).
The Nilpena Ediacara National Park was created in 2021 600 kilometres north of Adelaide as home for the oldest animal fossils on Earth and to help protect threatened native animals. Nilpena park was the edge of the 540-million-year-old Flinders Ranges, one of Earth’s oldest landscapes.
Replacing Ediacara National Conservation Park, Nilepna gave South Australia nearly 60,000 hectares of extra protected land, equal to the size of Luxemburg. Nilpena contained the world-renowned Ediacaran fossils giving an understanding of early evolution of complex life on Earth.
South Australian geologist Reg Sprigg found the Ediacaran fossils imprints in the Flinders Ranges in 1946. Palaeontologists and other researchers excavated 40 fossiliferous beds that preserve snapshots of the seafloor when animal life originally unfolded around 550 million years ago. This was the only place on Earth where this has occurred for fossils of any age.
Nilpena fossil beds preserve marine communities with many species . They include evidence of animals and the earliest movement and sexual reproduction.
American geologist Mary Droser returned to the site for more than 17 years to research the fossils that were featured in David Attenborough's Life documertary. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) invested research into the Flinders Ranges facility for an insight into how animal life has evolved on the planet and how life could develop on other planets.
Nilpena national park was a major part of the South Australian government’s push to get a world heritage listing for the Flinders Ranges. The park was formerly the Nilpena station. In 2019, The Nature Conservancy Australia enabled the property to be bought and transfered to the South Australian government, with funding by the Wyss Campaign for Nature. The shearers’ quarters, a blacksmith’s shop and a woolshed on the old Nilpena would be developed as research and visitor area, and an immersive interpretive centre.
