Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent

Nothofagus

Nothofagus is a significant plant in the fossil record because it is a climate indicator. Nothofagus pollen is of several types, each of which are produced by a number of species, both living and extinct. In tropical and warm sub-tropical and perhumid conditions with no seasonal aridity, brassii occurs in species requiring these conditions. 

Species with fusca and menziesii pollen type are produced in cool temperate species which can cope with little dryness. The earliest pollen to be found in the fossil record was Nothofagadites senectus pollen type. It was originally associated with brassii type. It is now thought to be an ancestral type, differing from any other pollen group.

No species of Nothofagus can survive long dry spells. As Australia moved northward and dried out Nothofagus became confined to refuges where its preferred conditions still prevail or migrated into new areas or into the mountains of New Guinea when they were arose.

• Biological History
• Botancial History
• Chenopod Shrublands
• Ecosystems
  Mulga Woodland
• Nitre Bush
• Rainforest
• Saltbush
• Spinifex Grasslands
• Simpson Desert Flora