Blina Shale
Australian geological formation
Blina Shale is a fossil bearing geological formation located in the Kimberley region of Northwest Australia.
The location is rich in deposits of vertebrate material, and the site of previously unknown Triassic species. Flora and invertebrate species have also been identified in the deposits, including microplankton and microflora.
Description
The site is located near Derby, Western Australia. The shale bed extends inland from King Sound at the coast, forming claypans where it is rarely exposed, with exploratory drilling indicating it is between 650 and 1,000 metres (2,130 and 3,280 ft) thick. The upper parts of the bed are finer layers sediments; these are evident in some ridges of the Erskine range.
As with the Kockatea Shale in the same region, the bed was formed by deposition in marine environs and at river deltas and estuaries. The palaeontological significance of the area was recognised in a geological survey of a region known a Fitzroy Trough in 1953, and examination by Brunnschweiler in 1954 determined the age to be Triassic and associated with the Erskine formation.
The earliest collections were forwarded to R. A. Stirton in the eastern states, and then to the United States for closer analysis.
The first extensive survey was undertaken by a collaboration between the University of California, represented by C. L. Camp and his undergraduate John Cosgriff, and the Western Australian Museum and University team of David Ride, Duncan Merrilees and K. G. McKenzie.
The public source identifies “Blina Shale” as australian geological formation. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Blina, Shale and Australian.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 26, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q65040395. Authority coordinates are -17.900, 124.400. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1953 and 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Blina Shale” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.