Wet Tropics of Queensland

The Wet Tropics of Queensland is a UNESCO World Heritage Site which has "the oldest continuously surviving tropical rainforests on Earth". The forests date from the Mesozoic era when the climate of Australia (and the world) was much more tropical than today. Originally, the rain forest area covered a much wider area than today. Today it is just a narrow strip along the east coast of Queensland. It starts just north of Townsville and continues to just south of Cooktown, a distance of about . 
The wet tropics cover an area of in 730 separate blocks of land. It includes 41 national parks covering. About 80% of the site is tropical rainforest. It is interesting because it is very old forest, and is a living record of 415 million years of evolution, going back to Pangea and Gondwana. All of Australia's marsupials, and many of its other animals, evolved in tropical rainforests, and many of their closest surviving ancestors still live in the Wet Tropics of Queensland.