Triassic Park Declared a World Heritage Site

On Wednesday November 29, 2000, the Ischigualasto Region was officially declared a United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organization World Heritage Site by the board of directors of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Cairns, Argentina. This rift valley, a starkly beautiful badlands region known as "The Valley of the Moon", was designated a provincial park and paleontological reserve in 1971. Dr. William Sill, with Dr. Oscar Alcober, has directed excavations of Triassic deposits of the earliest dinosaurs and the crocodilians that preceded them in the valley since 1969, and since 1994 with the help of Earthwatch volunteers. Ischigualasto is extraordinarily important to scientists since it harbors a complete sequence of sediments that bridge the "missing" 27 million years during the Triassic (roughly from 235 to 208 million years ago) that documents the dinosaurs' origins and rise to dominance. Nowhere else on Earth is there such a complete and abundant record for this period for both land animals and plants. Read more about the Triassic Park expedition.

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