Macrofossil evidence for Quaternary plant extinction and vegetation change in Western Australia

Abstract

Macrofossils from Pleistocene sediments in western Tasmania are investigated in order to reconstruct vegetation from this critical period. in the history of Australia's vegetation. The microfossil record shows that many taxa. notably the common Tertiary taxa Nothofagus subgenus Brassospora. Araucariaceae. Dacrycarpus and Dacrydium. were present in western Tasmania during the Latest Pliocene or Earliest Pleistocene but are now extinct from Tasmania. Most of these taxa are likely to have been rainforest species, but some may have been from sclerophyll vegetation (e.g. Beauprea). A few of these persisted into the Early-Middle Pleistocene and only Quintinia to the Late Pleistocene. Macrofossils of now globally and regionally extinct taxa occur in the EarlyMiddle Pleistocene Regatta Point sediments. Most of these extinct taxa are not distinct in the relatively good microfossil record of that area. Some clearly sclerophyllous taxa have become extinct e.g. Banksia strahanensis and Oxylobium sp. nov. Rainforest taxa no longer occurring in Tasmania have affinities with species from temperate New Zealand (e.g. Quintinia sp. nov.), montane north-eastern New South Wales and Queensland (e.g. Rubus cf. moorei forma glabra, aff. Austromyrtus and Laurophyllum sp.). Macrofossils of only one extinct species occur in sediments younger than Regatta Point: Banksia kingii from the Late Pleistocene Melaleuca Inlet sediments......