4 Times Australia Had an Inland Sea

The ocean has invaded Australia again and again. Places now occupied by inland towns, farmland, and dry Outback plains once lay beneath saltwater with coastlines stretching through landscapes that today are nowhere near the sea. The water eventually retreated, but its history remains written into the rocks. In this compilation, we're exploring four extraordinary chapters of that

history. We'll begin with the Murray Sea, which spread across parts of southeastern Australia. Then we'll travel much further back in time to the Larapintine Sea before investigating the even older marine environments of the Centralian Superbasin. Finally, we'll jump forward into the age of the dinosaurs when the Eromanga Sea transformed an enormous area of inland

Australia into a world inhabited by marine reptiles. Each story reveals a different version of this continent with unfamiliar shorelines, changing environments, and evidence that survives long after the seas themselves disappeared. Today, the Murray River winds through dry landscapes, red cliffs, vineyards, and mallee scrub. It is Australia's longest river and the lifeblood of

southeastern Australia. But what if I told you that this river was not always a river? What if I told you that whales once swam above parts of Victoria? That sea urchins crawled across the seafloor where vineyards now stand? That millions of years ago some of the ocean stretched hundreds of kilometers inland, flooding

vast areas of South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales beneath a shallow sea. A sea so extensive that it left behind towering limestone cliffs, countless marine fossils, and evidence of an Australia that looked nothing like the continent we know today. This is the story of the Murray Sea. The Murray River is one of Australia's