For palaeontologists, it's a prehistoric seabed full of fossilised treasure and the most precious material of all is at a place called Ediacara. The Ediacara fauna represents the Holy Grail of palaeontology. It was the first animals on the planet. When these things were discovered in the late 1940s and put into the scientific literature, everybody in the world wanted some. That desire has come at a great cost to Australia because the fossils of Ediacara are prized cargo in the international fossil black market.
People go in there all the time and slabs are being turned over.
There's evidence people are in there all the time. Ben McHenry is in charge of collections at the South Australian Museum. He knows the power of Ediacaran fossils because he trades them to grateful museums across the world who will exchange almost anything for the earliest slice of life on earth. But he knows the legitimate trade pales in comparison with the scale of the illegitimate. I think the majority of buyers are private collectors.