Southern Limestones under Western Eyes: The Modern World Evolving in Southern Australia

Abstract

Southern Australia faces the Early Neogene Southern Ocean Repopulating southern Australian neritic seas The Lakes Entrance Oil Shaft and packaging biogeohistory Limestone seas expanding and coal forests returning Miocene climatic optimum Meanwhile, back in the ocean: The Circum-Antarctic Current And then it all changed Modern Australia: A desert with damp fringes Descent into the icehouse Leeuwin Current in southern Australia-one last time 10. Contingency, consilience and historicity are the guts of biogeohistory The sweep of biogeohistory in portraits: The labours of the conchologists The heroic age of geology? Evolution down the decades: Darwinian Revolution, anti-Darwin decades, Darwinian Restoration The two cultures of evolution, then the tripod supplants the bell curve Consilience of inductions 'Any concept is only as good as the research program it inspires.' What were we doing in the 1950s and 1960s? Mysterious Priabonian and the return of the chronofaunas Death of the dinosaurs at the K-Pg: Strangelove Ocean, Living ocean or heterogeneous ocean? Epilogue: Eternal tensions revisited Treating Palaeogene and Neogene as informal biochrons Consensus lacking regionally on the Eocene-Oligocene boundary Eustasy and isostasy-again Abbreviations Glossary References xi List of figures and tables For assessing the first draft constructively and encouragingly I am indebted to Henk Brinkhuis and Patrick DeDeckker. Brian Kennett, chair of the Science and Engineering editorial board at ANU Press, has been steadfastly positive and encouraging all the way through since the first tentative proposal. Beth Battrick did a marvellous job of copyediting and indexing and did it with patience and good humour. Likewise, Sarah Sky and Teresa Prowse and ANU Press did this book, and me, proud. 1 Glyn Williams, Naturalists at sea (2013). 5 Reg Sprigg was the most dynamic and productive contributor to the postwar expansion of Australian geology. See Note 10 in Chapter 9. 1 See Eiseley (1967).