Another of the fantastic Celebrate Australia releases is this 2011 $1 coin portraying a wonderful Australian landscape inscribed on the World Heritage List.
The Australian Fossil Mammal Sites World Heritage Area was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1994 and it contains two distinct locations one is Naracoorte in South Australia and the other is Riversleigh in Queensland which is also famous for its gold and mineral deposits. The Fossil Mammal Site at Naracoorte is found on the limestone coast region in the southeast of South Australia and covers an area of around 300 hectares.
The caves of Naracoorte have acted as pitfall traps, collecting animals for at least 500,000 years and preserving the most complete fossil record for this period in Australia. Riversleigh, in northwest Queensland, covers an area of 10,000 hectares that includes the fossil remains of ancient mammals, birds and reptiles, some of which date back to 25 million years ago.
The coin’s coloured reverse depicts the Australian Fossil Mammal Site of Riversleigh and overlayed on this scene is a recreation of the Thylacoleo carnifex marsupial lion which one of the many mammal fossils found at Naracoorte.
