Age of Fishes Museum Canowindra

Driving north from Canberra, our trip took us through the small New South Wales town of Canowindra. Interestingly, the town has a museum dedicated to the Age of Fishes.

Fossils were first found in 1955 when roadworks uncovered a slab of rock with interesting impressions. This was later brought to the attention of the Australian Museum in Sydney. In 1993, a dig uncovered 70 tonnes of fossils containing over 3,000 fish. Dated to the Devonian period, the fossils are over 360 million years old.

The site is significant not only for the number of fish, but that they all died at the same time. It appears that a dry spell caused all of the fish to die, preserving the different species and their relative abundance. This is important because usually with the discovery of single specimens, it’s relation and abundance to other species is difficult to determine.

The Age of Fishes Museum

The skull of a giant armoured fish greets you on entering the museum. The modern museum building displays the best of the recovered fossils. Information boards explain the process of recovering and evaluating them along with their significance.

The condition of many of the fossils are not perfect, reflecting the environment they were preserved in. But this isn’t a museum with perfect exhibits picked from the best available worldwide. It shows what happened locally and the scientific value far outweighs their appearance.

Stored in a huge shed next to the museum, the vast majority of the fossils await future study. One large door was open, so we could see fossils stored inside. The information at the museum indicates that many more remain buried at the dig site possibly for recovery at some time in the future.

We enjoyed our visit here and were pleased that we stopped.

To see what else there is to do in New South Wales, please see some of our other stories.