state fossil

Forgive me for my ignorance but I had no idea we had state fossils until the South Australian one popped up in the news this week.  This is the Spriggina, pictured above, named after Australian geologist Reg Sprigg.  This early animal was found in the Ediacara Hills north of Adelaide and nowhere else.  No one is quite sure what kind of animal it is. It could be a worm or an arthropod, or it could be some animal that has disappeared completely.

It seems that the practice of choosing a state fossil started in Western Australia which adopted the gogo fish in 1995.  New South Wales followed in 2015 with the Mandageria, a lobe-finned fish, 265 million years old, discovered at the Mandagory Sandstone outcrop near the Canowindra fossil site. Victoria put their choice of fossil to a public vote and fortunately did not end up with McFossil McFossil but with a koolaschus, a kind of large amphibian. Queensland chose in 2025 the big-nosed dinosaur which lived 96 million years ago near an inland sea and had teeth at the tip of its snout. Tasmania and the Northern Territory have yet to nominate their state fossils.

The term state fossil should be in the dictionary just so that no one mistakenly thinks it is a reference to an aging politician.