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OFR 151.pdf - CRC LEME

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The regional vegetation appears to have been sclerophyll woodlands, with relict populations<br />

of rainforest species in the uplands or (gallery forest) on the banks of streams flowing into the<br />

Eyre Basin.<br />

Inferred climate<br />

Climates are likely to have been relatively cool (mesotherm range) and seasonally dry<br />

(subhumid-humid), although rainfall (or groundwater discharge) was adequate to support the<br />

wetlands in the Callabonna Sub-basin.<br />

5.2.4 South-West Australia<br />

Late Neogene microfloras are preserved at Yallalie north of Perth and in fragmented lake<br />

systems on the Yilgarn Plateau (Bint 1981, Clarke 1994).<br />

1. Yallalie Basin<br />

A 110 m thick sequence of Late Neogene (Macphail 1994b, Dodson and Macphail in press)<br />

lacustrine silts and clays is sealed under Quaternary cover beds in a probable Early<br />

Cretaceous meteor crater (Dentith et al. 1999) at Yallalie, about 200 km north of Perth<br />

(Yallalie Basin). Palaeomagnetic dating (J. Dodson pers. comm.) confirms that these<br />

sediments accumulated between ~2.5 to 3.6 Ma – a period that coincides with pronounced<br />

warming in the mid to high latitudes of both hemispheres (Macphail 1997b). Charcoal is<br />

abundant in all samples.<br />

At least 100 distinctive fossil pollen and spore types are present (M.K. Macphail unpubl.<br />

data). The number of plants forming the source vegetation is likely to be much greater since<br />

many types represent more than one species or genus and several distinctive fossil types<br />

cannot be assigned to any living family or genus. Dominants are Restionaceae and<br />

sclerophyll taxa, in particular non-eucalypt Myrtaceae such as Melaleuca and Leptospermum:<br />

Chenopodiaceae-Amarathaceae are common to abundant in three intervals with estimated<br />

ages of 2.56 Ma, 2.59 Ma and 2.90 Ma but otherwise are uncommon to rare (< 1%).<br />

Araucariaceae are sporadically frequent to common over the same period. Rare taxa represent<br />

a number of rainforest species that no longer occur in south-west Australia, such as Cyathea,<br />

Calochlaena, Lygodium, Pteris and Phyllocladus, or Australia as a whole, such as.<br />

Dacrycarpus, Dacrydium, Nothofagus (Brassospora) spp. and Ungeria. Some other taxa no<br />

longer occur in the local area, such as Caesalpinaceae, Podocarpus and Eucalyptus<br />

spathulata. Aglaoreidia qualumis represents an extinct clade of Sparganiaceae.<br />

2. Yilgarn Craton<br />

Pliocene microfloras appear to be widely preserved in relict drainage lines in south-west<br />

Western Australia (Bint 1981, Clarke 1994, Partridge 1997). These are dominated by<br />

Casuarinaceae and Restionaceae but also include trace numbers of Araucariaceae (chiefly<br />

Araucaria with occasional Agathis/Wollemia), Podocarpaceae (including Lagarostrobos),<br />

Nothofagus (Brassospora) spp. and Sapotaceae.<br />

Inferred climate<br />

The presence of Araucariaceae hints that mean temperatures in south-west Western Australia<br />

were warmer (upper mesotherm) than at present during the mid Pliocene. If Pliocene Agathis<br />

spp. at Yallalie possessed similar temperature requirements to the most southerly occurring<br />

species (A. bidwillii) then mean minimum and maximum temperature will have been ~16 0 C<br />

and ~26 0 C based on 1995 Bureau of Meteorology climatic averages for Brisbane. The mean<br />

minimum temperature of the coldest month will have been between 5-10 0 C and mean<br />

274

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