Some of Australia’s most famous animals – wombat, platypus, kangaroos and the extinct marsupial tiger thylacine – have been traced back to their fossil ancestors in remarkable finds in central South Australia. Now a remote expedition to a large inland salt lake in 2017 has sifted through remains unearthed in Namba Formation deposits to describe a tiny new skink, an ancestor of Australia’s well-known bluetongue lizards.