Canowindra, New South Wales

Canowindra (pronounced Can-noun-dra, not the commonly used Can-oh-win-dra) is a historic township located near Cowra in the central west of New South Wales, Australia in Cabonne Shire.

Fossils
Canowindra is the site of one of the world's great fossil discoveries. A chance discovery by a road worker in 1956 uncovered a rich find of 360 million year old fish fossils, dating from the Devonian period in the Paleozoic era. The "Canowindra slab" was removed to the Australian Museum, Sydney. The fish had been buried when trapped in a pool of water that dried up, stranding two armoured antiarch placoderms, Remigolepis walkeri and Bothriolepis yeungae, and Canowindra grossi, a lobe-finned crossopterygian fish, with two rare juvenile arthrodire placoderms, Groenlandaspis species.

No further fossils had been recovered until January 1993, when a trial dig on the site using an excavator rediscovered the fossil stratum, where the mass mortality of fishes was preserved in detail (see Lagerstätte). Specimens can be viewed in the specially established Age of Fishes Museum, with scientific support and funding from the Australian Museum. The Canowindra site has now been listed as part of Australia's National Heritage because of its international scientific importance.