Yea Flora Fossil Site

The Yea Flora Fossil Site is a roadside cutting on Limestone Road, Yea, Victoria, Australia. It contains fossils of genus Baragwanathia, some of the world's earliest vascular plants dating back to the begin of the Devonian period, 415 million years ago.[1][2][3]

The fossils were discovered in 1875, but the significance was not recognized until they were studied in the 1930s by Australian botanist Isabel Cookson.[4] Her work overturned long held scientific understandings of how and when plants evolved.

The site is listed on the Australian National Heritage List.[1]

  1. ^ a b "Yea Flora Fossil Site", National Heritage Places, Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, retrieved 31 January 2012
  2. ^ "Flora Fossil Site - Yea (Place ID 105851)". Australian Heritage Database. Australian Government.
  3. ^ Yea Flora Fossil Site, Murrindinti Shire, archived from the original on 15 June 2009, retrieved 31 January 2012
  4. ^ Lang, William H.; Cookson, Isabel C. (1935). "On a flora, including vascular land plants, associated with Monograptus, in rocks of Silurian age, from Victoria, Australia". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B. 224 (517): 421–449. doi:10.1098/rstb.1935.0004.