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The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia provides outstanding examples of ongoing geological processes associated with Tertiary volcanic activity, and of biological evolution.
The World Heritage values include:
- The caldera of the Tweed Shield Volcano is considered one of the best preserved erosion caldera in the world and is notable for its size, its age (20 million years), and for the presence of a prominent central mountain mass with all three stages of the erosion of shield volcanoes (the planeze, residual and skeletal stages).
- Centres of endemism where ongoing evolution is taking place.
- Flora and fauna of low dispersal capability that occur in more than one isolated pocket of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia.
- Plant taxa that show evidence of relatively recent evolution, including:
- genera in Southern Hemisphere families (e.g. Winteraceae, Monimiaceae and Lauraceae in the Magnolidae, Proteaceae, Cunoniaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Escalloniaceae, Davidsoniaceae Pittosporaceae, Myrtaceae and Sapindaceae in the Rosidae and, Elaeocarpaceae, Sterculiaceae and Ebenaceae in the Dillenidae).
- monotypic endemic families (e.g. Akaniaceae and Petermanniaceae).
- Animal taxa that show evidence of relatively recent evolution, including:
- 3 species of frogs in the myobatrachid genus Pseudophyrne believed to have diverged in the Pliocene.
- species of frogs in the relict genus Philoria/Kyarranus and the Litoria pearsoniana/ phyllochroa complex.
- reptiles such as Eulamprus spp.
- invertebrates such as snails, earthworms, crays, velvet worms and carabid beetles, including taxa that show overlap and intergradation of different faunal elements (e.g. ants and dung beetles).
- The diversity of plant and animal species.
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