Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

At least 4 glacials are believed to a covered by a sediment core from Lake Lake Coomboo on fraser Island, which indicates increased dry forest at times when the lake was dry. When it was full the pollen record indicates the presence of either rainforest or wet sclerophyll forests (Longmore & Heijnis, 1999). Dry forests with a large component of casuarina with some eucalypts and Angophora are indicated for most of the period covered by the core. At about 22,000 BP there was a drying event in which the casuarinas disappeared and the dry sclerophyll ofrest was dominated by eucalypts. During the last 12,000 years the casuarina component recovered strongly. At first, rainforest was well represented, declining through the entire sequence, eventually being replaced by eucalypt and melaleuca-dominated wet sclerophyll forest. At about 350,000 BP there was a pronounced shift from rainforest to wet sclerophyll forest. Throughout the entire sequence charcoal had been present, steadily increasing to a peak at about 20,000 BP (Johnson, 2006).

• 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