Veronika Wild

  Note what a very small proportion of Australia this is, though it packs a big biodiversity punch, way beyond its size                                                               - Map by Copilot Australia is an ancient continent. There was a time, about 180 million years ago  that the whole of Australia was covered by tropical rainforest but that was before it started drifting North. Slowly it became hotter and drier, but even that process didn't proceed in an orderly fashion. Australia went through successive ice ages which wore down it’s mountain tops and exposed its continental shelves, allowing some exchange of species. However, in between there were warmer, wetter periods which washed topsoils into the sea until much of the rainforest was gone, leaving behind a largely arid continent where only highly adapted...