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The Conversation
The Conversation
Lachlan Hart, Lecturer, School of Education, UNSW Sydney

250 million-year-old amphibian fossils from Australia reveal global spread of ‘sea-salamanders’

Ancient marine amphibians Erythrobatrachus (foreground) and Aphaneramma (background). Pollyanna von Knorring (Swedish Museum of Natural History)

The Kimberley region in the north-west corner of Western Australia is full of rugged ranges and gorges, and long stretches of red soil and rocky ground. The dry seasons are long, and the wet seasons often flood the Martuwarra Fitzroy River – an artery to the Indian Ocean – in the region’s south.

But if you were to travel back to the Early Triassic period, 250 million years ago, you would see a very different landscape. Back then, the land was covered in brackish water and was more like a mudflat, on the shore of a shallow bay.

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