BBC.COM - I slowly scanned the sedimentary layers of the gorge. If you know how to read it, this repository of the planet's evolution is one of the world's best exposure sites, according to Mary Droser, professor of geology at University of California Riverside.
"The Flinders Ranges encompasses a huge swath of time that incorporates all of the really wacky environmental things that were going on, from Snowball Earth to global warming," said Droser. "We can see a 350-million-year window of time from a microbial world through to through to the early history of animals."