Nothofagusmacrofossils from the Tertiary of Tasmania

Cenozoic plant macrofossil sites of Tasmania

“…Volcanic activity may have contributed to the formation of the river system. Balfour (described above) and Pioneer are the only well-preserved lowland floras of this age in Tasmania (Hill 1983b, Scriven & Hill 1997, Hill & Scriven 1997, Jordan & Hill 1999. The site was flooded after mining operations (and hence pumping) ceased, and no more material can be easily obtained.…”

“…This site is of limited interest because of the limited amount of material, with only Nothofagus tasmanica (Hill 1983b) and A throtaxis rhomboidea (Hill & Brodribb 1999) formally documented. Other drill cores have been inspected unsuccessfully for fossils.…”

“…Fossiliferous sediment from a drill-core at Bells Plains has been dated as Oligocene (Hill 1983b), and underlies basalt. This site is of limited interest because of the limited amount of material, with only Nothofagus tasmanica (Hill 1983b) and A throtaxis rhomboidea (Hill & Brodribb 1999) formally documented.…”

“…It has been dated palynostratigraphically as 0 ligo-Miocene (Hill 1983b). This site is the type locality of Nothofagus tasmanica (Hill 1983b). It also contains other undocumented fossils, although the preservation is mostly poor.…”

Timing, exotic terranes, angiosperm diversification, and panbiogeography

“…Humphries's attempt in triplicate (Humphries 1981a(Humphries , b, 1983) at a cladistic analysis failed to resolve the New Guinea and New Caledonia taxa. So also did Hill's (1983) phenetic analysis (UPGMA), though it should be noted that since this study was designed principally to integrate fossil with extant taxa, it was perforce based on leaf characters only. These two outcomes might seem to add weight to the opinion of Romero (1986) that these two geographical groups are too closely related systematically for them to have been isolated from each other for some 50 million years.…”