WHEN: February to July 2026

WHERE: Museum Main Foyer

COST: FREE

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This new free display in the South Australian Museum's Main Foyer features artwork of 512-million-year-old fossils from the Emu Bay Shale on Kangaroo Island, in a collaboration between Museum palaeontologist and Adelaide University Associate Professor Diego Garcia-Bellido and renowned scientific illustrator Peter Trusler.

The Emu Bay Shale formation was discovered by South Australian scientist Reg Sprigg in the 1950s – the same person the Museum’s regular Sprigg Salons are named after, and who discovered the Ediacara Biota inthe Flinders Ranges.

The deposit has been the subject of intense research by the Museum in partnership with Adelaide University and the University of New England, Armidale, since 2007.

Read more about the process of creating these illustrations in our latest article, Stamps deliver Museum’s groundbreaking fossil display.

The painting is also the source material for a collector series of stamps, released by Australia Post titled Creatures of the Palaeozoic.