Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

The marine sediment cores from the Banda Sea and the Lombok Ridge contain pollen from both Indonesia and Australia. The pollen types are made difficult to interpret because of the mixing from the 2 sources. It has been suggested that the presence of high levels of pollen from grasses, sedges and eucalypts indicate the pollen in the deposit is predominantly from Australian sources (Wang et al., 1999). A shift from ferns, mangroves and rainforest of the interglacials to sedges, chenopods and grasses during the glacials. At about 185,000 BP, the start of the coldest, driest phases of the second last glacial cycle, grasses increased while eucalypts decreased. This was a major, sustained change that is believed to have recorded the beginning of the spread of open savanna in northwestern Australia, that coincided with an increase in charcoal (Johnson, 2006). Cores from the Banda Sea site indicate grasslands were increasing and eucalypts were declining around the time of the LGM (Van der Kaars et al., 2000).

Sites where pollen has been recovered in cores

• The Moist Tropics
• Southeastern Australia
• The Arid Zone
• The Carpentaria Plain - New Lands
• The Bassian Plain

Sites where pollen has been recovered in cores

• Banda Sea
• Lombok Ridge
• Site GC17, off Western Australia
• ODP820, marine sediment core 45 km off Cairns
• Lynchs Crater, Atherton Tablelands (Kershaw et a., 1993; Moss & Kershaw, 2000)
• Old Lake Coomboo, Fraser Island
• Cuddie Springs, New South Wales
• Lake George
• Lake Wangoom
• Site E55-6
• Wyelangta
• Egg Lagoon
• Lake Selina, Tasmanis
• Darwin Crater, Tasmania

Sources & Further reading

1. Mary E. White, The Greening of Gondwana, the 400 Million Year story of Australian Plants, Reed, 1994
2. Chris Johnson, Australia's Mammal Extinctions, a 50,000 year history, Cambridge University Press, 2006

Sources & Further reading