They found the gulf snapping turtle, a species thought to have died out up to 50,000 years ago. To be still discovering so many large species at the end of the twentieth century in a developed country puts Australia in a class of its own. We know so little about the one million other species that share our continent and waters. A staggering 850,000-plus plant, animal and microbe species are yet to be scientifically classified. The variety of nature is known as biological diversity or biodiversity .
Biodiversity is more than just the number of different plant and animal species.
The long isolation of Australia over much of the last 50 million years and its northward movement have led to the evolution of a rich diversity of unique and unusual plants, animals and microbes. More than 80 per cent of Australia's known marsupials, freshwater fish, frogs, reptiles and plant species are native to Australia alone. Our ancient lands and seas still contain many species that evolved millions of years ago. Seagrasses, for example, first appeared more than 100 million years ago, a small damselfly evolved at least 280 million years ago, and kauri pines date back 175 million years. Australia also has a number of 'living fossils' - the ancestors of the lung fish, which lives today in the Burnett and Mary Rivers in Queensland, were swimming around 400 million years ago.