The KOPPERAMANNA map area covers arid stony tableland and sandridge desert on the Birdsville Track, in the Great Australian Artesian Basin about 100 km north of Marree and to the east of Lake Eyre, South Australia. The Cooper Creek crosses the area from north-east to south-west. The oldest outcropping rocks are mid-Cretaceous claystone and lithic sandstone of the Winton Formation, which are exposed in two gentle structures, the Gason Dome and the Dulkaninna Uplift. Sandstones of the overlying Paleocene to Eocene Eyre Formation are up to 60 m thick and are exposed in silcrete-capped scarps. Following gentle folding that took place later in the Oligocene or Miocene, lacustrine carbonates of the Miocene Etadunna Formation (up to 90 m thick) were deposited, and were succeeded by stream channel deposits such as the Katipiri Sands containing remains of Diprotodon. Later Pleistocene time is represented by gypseous scarps, the remnants of an old landscape which was succeeded by extensive Pleistocene to Recent reddish longitudinal sand ridges. The subsurface may be divided into an irregular ridge possibly containing Cambrian and Ordovician rocks and an extension of the Cooper Basin, with Permian sediments in the north-east. These are covered by a mantle of Mesozoic rocks. Artesian bores along the Birdsville Track tap groundwater supplies for farming beef cattle from the Lower Cretaceous Cadna-owie Formation and/or Upper Jurassic Algebuckina Sandstone.