New research has painted a clearer picture of the ancient Flinders Ranges landscape and early fossil formations.
Unusual rock formations were found to be evidence of canyons formed underwater.
The area is included in an ongoing bid for UNESCO World Heritage status.
Researchers have found new evidence about how ancient sea level changes led to the preservation of some of Earth's earliest complex life forms.
Geological features across South Australia's Flinders Ranges were mapped in the study led by Adelaide University, reconstructing the landscape of hundreds of millions of years ago to investigate how sediment and fossils came to be.
"You have to imagine that the Flinders Ranges … was under the ocean," University of Adelaide associate professor Diego Garcia-Bellido said.
"Canyons were being carved and creating this accommodation space for a lot more sediment."
The findings focused on the Ediacaran period, about 550 million years ago, "at the time or just before the appearance of the first complex life on the planet".
Looking at Nilpena Ediacara National Park in the Flinders Ranges, researchers noticed unusual rock formations that indicated the presence of submarine canyons.
Dr Garcia-Bellido and his colleagues from the university and the South Australian Museum began finding the canyons "all over the Flinders", up to 280 metres deep and 6 kilometres wide.