INCREDIBLY WELL-PRESERVED FOSSILS DISCOVERED IN AUSTRALIA RED ROCK

McGraths Flat is a natural wonder in Australia's New South Wales that is hidden beneath farmland. There, a wealth of fossils was found, including some soft tissue fossils that were recently found preserved in unusual goethite rocks. Many of the flora and animals that wander the earth today evolved during the Miocene epoch, which is when the McGraths Flat was formed. It was once a lush, humid rainforest, but now it is a dry, dusty place. Researchers now think that this could be a method for figuring out where to look for fossils that have been exceptionally preserved in other places.

Researchers examined several fossils from the McGraths Flat site in a paper that was published by the Australian Museum Research Institute in the Gondwana Research journal. They discovered something unexpected: even though these fossils weren't made of the best rock material typically found, they were remarkably well-preserved. The best fossils are typically found in strata that include a lot of sandstone, limestone, shale, or volcanic ash. Instead, goethite—“a fine-grained mineral that includes iron,” according to researcher Tara Djokic—made up the entirety of the McGraths Flat fossils. Iron is often associated with rusting these days, which is the result of exposure to the elements. However, the iron particles actually contributed to the preservation of minute characteristics in the goethite fossils.

Ferricrete, often known as cement formed of iron, is the name of the rock that was discovered in Australia. It is made up of extremely fine mineral particles that have filled every cell of the dead animal that was left in the silt. The end product is a fossil that maintains even the finest features at the cellular level, in addition to capturing the overall traits of animals on a macro level.

The paper makes the case that knowing how the McGraths Flat changed as an ecosystem will assist scientists in finding new potential locations for investigation. Researchers believe that if a location has fine-layered, fine-grained ferricrete and a number of other conditions are met, there is a possibility that the site would produce equally high-level, iron-rich fossils. In fact, this may be rewriting the guidelines for criteria and preferences in fossil study, opening up a whole new field for palaeontology.