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It Took Millions of Years for Australia's Famous Twelve Apostles Landmark to Rise Out of the Sea
Key takeaways
- About 2.2 million people visited the site in 2024, with experts estimating an increase to 3 million by 2032.
- “Despite their ‘iconic’ status,” researchers write in a study published last month in the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, “their geology is not well known.”
- Lead author Stephen Gallagher and his team, however, shed light on how the distinctive landmark came to be.
Ank Kumar via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0 In Victoria, Australia, the Great Ocean Road takes tourists past the “Twelve Apostles”—a collection of seven (confusingly, not a dozen) limestone rock stacks that stand 131 to 230 feet tall in the Southern Ocean, like puzzle pieces that drifted away from the equally dramatic coastline. About 2.2 million people visited the site in 2024, with experts estimating an increase to 3 million by 2032.
“Despite their ‘iconic’ status,” researchers write in a study published last month in the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, “their geology is not well known.”
Lead author Stephen Gallagher and his team, however, shed light on how the distinctive landmark came to be. They found that tectonic plate movements raised the rock towers out of the water, and that their layers date back 8.6 million to 14 million years, making them younger than researchers had previously theorized.