Present day northern South Australia, including the Strzelecki, Sturt Stony, and Tirari deserts, is semi-arid to arid with only sparse vegetation, sand dunes, silcrete capped mesas or bare stony gibber plain, and the playa Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre. Abundant palaeobotanical, palynological and vertebrate palaeontological evidence, however, demonstrates for much of the Paleogene-Neogene ('Tertiary') a much wetter past of landscapes covered by forests and woodlands with permanent rivers, hosting a diverse fauna. These palaeontological resources include widespread leaf impression and fruit and seed mould macrofloras in silcrete-the silcrete floras-that contain a mixture of sclerophyllous elements including Eucalyptus and other woody fruited Myrtaceae, Banksia-Banksieaeformis and other Proteaceae, together with leaves like Brachychiton (kurrajong, bottle tree, or flame tree), and 'rainforest' elements, such as Callicoma and Gymnostoma. The geographical distribution of the silcrete floras has been poorly documented. Our review shows the northern South Australia silcrete floras are widely dispersed between the Billa Kalina, Lake Eyre, and Torrens basins and the eastern margin of the Eucla Basin, in rock units spanning the Eocene to Miocene. We present a brief synthesis of available knowledge of these important records of the past climates and vegetation of central Australia, but note the need for substantive new analyses.David R. Greenwood* [greenwoodd@brandonu.ca], Department of Biology, Brandon University, 270-18th Street, Brandon, Manitoba R7A 6A9, Canada; John G. Conran [john.conran@adelaide.edu.au], Environment Institute, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.