Climate and vegetation in southeastern Australia respond to Southern Hemisphere insolation forcing in the late Pliocene–early Pleistocene

Diverse Fossil Epacrids (Styphelioideae; Ericaceae) from Early Pleistocene Sediments at Stony Creek Basin, Victoria, Australia

“…Alternatively, the geographic range of diverse epacrid floras may have been much wider than it now is, but local extinction reduced the diversity of some regions (e.g., the Victorian western uplands). Since there is now clear evidence for extensive Pleistocene extinctions in southern Australia (e.g., Jordan 1997;Sniderman et al 2007), the latter is the more plausible explanation for the Stony Creek Basin data. This would then imply that the modern radiation of Styphelioideae in eastern Australia was well advanced by the beginning of the Pleistocene, at a time when warm temperate rain forest still occurred in the Victorian western uplands (Sniderman et al 2007), a region now dominated by cool temperate sclerophyllous vegetation and entirely lacking rain forest.…”

“…These can be used to indicate that the sediments are no older than the latest Pliocene. The sediments in the upper 25 m of the core are of reversed magnetic polarity and therefore predate the Brunhes/ Matuyama polarity transition at 0.78 Ma, while the sediments below 25 m are of normal polarity (Sniderman et al 2007). Considering the zircon dates, this transition can be attributed to end of the Olduvai subchron (1.781 Ma; Lisiecki and Raymo 2005).…”

“…Considering the zircon dates, this transition can be attributed to end of the Olduvai subchron (1.781 Ma; Lisiecki and Raymo 2005). Correlation of the pollen record with the astronomical timescale based on an age model derived from counting annual sediment laminae indicates that deposition of the pollen sequence occurred between 1.83 and 1.55 Ma (Sniderman et al 2007), which straddles the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary at 1.81 Ma (Gradstein et al 2004).…”

“…The age of the basin is described in detail by Sniderman et al (2007). In brief, zircons from a core extracted by hollowauger drilling in 2000 give ages of 1:93 6 0:18 million years (Ma) for a thin volcanogenic layer at 29-m depth and 1:99 6 0:43 Ma for fine sands at the base of the core.…”

“…Some fossils were extracted from two portions of the core described by Sniderman et al (2007). These parts were between the 2.6-and 4.35-m depths and between the 19.6-and 22.1-m depths, which correspond to ca.…”