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1
Rix, Alan. "The Triassic insects of Denmark Hill, Ipswich, Southeast Queensland: the creation, use and dispersal of a collection." Memoirs of the Queensland Museum - Nature 62 (March 18, 2021): 217–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.17082/j.2204-1478.62.2021.2020-11.
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Type and additional fossil insects from the Late Triassic Denmark Hill locality in Southeast Queensland, Australia, are held in the collections of the Queensland Museum (Brisbane), the Australian Museum (Sydney) and the Natural History Museum of the United Kingdom (London). The history of these collections shows that they were the product of a concerted effort in the first two decades of the twentieth century to extract the fossils by Benjamin Dunstan, Queensland’s Chief Government Geologist, and to describe the fossils by Dunstan and Robin Tillyard, the foremost Australian entomologist of the time. They collaborated closely to document the late Triassic insects of Australia, at the same time as Dunstan carefully curated and organised both the official government collection of these insects for the Geological Survey of Queensland, and his own private collection. The death of the two men in the 1930s led to the sale by his widow of Dunstan’s private fossil collection (including type and type counterpart specimens) to the British Museum, and the donation of Tillyard’s by his widow to the same institution, in addition to some material that went to the Australian Museum. This paper documents the locations of all of the published specimens. The history of the Denmark Hill fossils (a site no longer accessible for collection) highlights the problems for researchers of the dispersal of holdings such as these, and in particular the separation of the part and counterpart of the same insect fossils. It also raises ethical questions arising from the ownership and disposal of private holdings of important fossil material collected in an official capacity.
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Mcnamara, Kenneth, and Frances Dodds. "The Early History of Palaeontology in Western Australia: 1791-1899." Earth Sciences History 5, no. 1 (January 1, 1986): 24–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.17704/eshi.5.1.t85384660311h176.
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The exploration of the coast of Western Australia by English and French explorers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries led to the first recorded discoveries of fossiliferous rocks in Western Australia. The first forty years of exploration and discovery of fossil sites in the State was restricted entirely to the coast of the Continent. Following the establishment of permanent settlements in the 1820s the first of the inland fossil localities were located in the 1830s, north of Albany, and north of Perth. As new land was surveyed; particularly north of Perth, principally by the Gregory brothers in the 1840s and 1850s, Palaeozoic rocks were discovered in the Perth and Carnarvon Basins. F.T. Gregory in particular developed a keen interest in the geology of the State to such an extent that he was able, at a meeting of the Geological Society of London in 1861, to present not only a geological map of part of the State, but also a suite of fossils which showed the existence of Permian and Hesozoic strata. The entire history of nineteenth century palaeontology in Western Australia was one of discovery and collection of specimens. These were studied initially by overseas naturalists, but latterly, in the 1890s by Etheridge at The Australian Museum in Sydney. Sufficient specimens had been collected and described by the turn of the century that the basic outline of the Phanerozoic geology of the sedimentary basins was reasonably well known.
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Retallack, G. J. "Precambrian life on land." Journal of Palaeosciences 63, no. (1-2) (December 31, 2014): 1–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.54991/jop.2014.289.
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Although Precambrian landscapes have been regarded as barren as the surface of Mars, increasingly close inspection of fossil soils (palaeosols) is revealing a variety of fossils, comparable with those already documented in Cambrian to Ordovician (542–444 Ma) palaeosols. The biggest surprise was that some Ediacaran (550 Ma) fossils of South Australia grew in soils. Different kinds of palaeosols can be used to define Ediacaran terrestrial communities in Australia (550 Ma) and Newfoundland (565 Ma). Simple discoids such as Aspidella dominate communities of intertidal sulfidic palaeosols, whereas quilted forms such as Dickinsonia dominate communities of well drained palaeosols. The discoids may be simple microbial colonies, but complex quilted fossils may be lichenized fungi. Complex quilted fossils appear in palaeosols during the Ediacaran along with large “acritarchs” (such as Ceratosphaeridium, and Germinosphaera) comparable with fungal chlamydospores and vesicles like those of Glomales (Glomeromycota). Discoid fossils and microbial filaments also are found in Palaeoproterozoic palaeosols, for example, in the 2100 Ma Stirling Range Quartzite of Western Australia. Complex Palaeoproterozoic (2200 Ma) fossils in South African palaeosols include Diskagma, comparable with the living endocyanotic Geosiphon (Archaeosporales, Glomeromycota). Archaean (2800 Ga) palaeosols of South Africa contain fossils such as Thucomyces, comparable with modern columnar biofilms. Even older terrestrial fossils may be represented by un–named spindle–like fossils from the 3000 Ma Farrel Quartzite and 3420 Ma Strelley Pool Formation of Western Australia. These spindle–like forms are comparable in morphology with modern soil actinobacteria, such as Planomonospora. Life on land may extend well back into geological history. Positive feedback for soil stabilization by formation of clay and organic matter, and the metered supply of water and nutrients in soils, make soils attractive sites for theories concerning the origin of life.
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Park, Travis, Erich M. G. Fitzgerald, Stephen J. Gallagher, Ellyn Tomkins, and Tony Allan. "New Miocene Fossils and the History of Penguins in Australia." PLOS ONE 11, no. 4 (April 26, 2016): e0153915. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153915.
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Conran, John G., Raymond J. Carpenter, and Gregory J. Jordan. "Early Eocene Ripogonum (Liliales: Ripogonaceae) leaf macrofossils from southern Australia." Australian Systematic Botany 22, no. 3 (2009): 219. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/sb08050.
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We present evidence that fossil leaves from an early Eocene estuarine mudstone deposit at Lowana Road in western Tasmania include the oldest records of the extant monocot genus, Ripogonum (Ripogonaceae). These fossils are similar to the extant eastern Australian and Papua New Guinean R. album R.Br. and New Zealand R. scandens J.R. et G.Forst., and are described as a new species, R. tasmanicum Conran, R.J.Carp. & G.J.Jord. The venation, cuticular and other leaf features of this fossil are included in a morphology-based phylogenetic analysis for the genus, and character evolution is discussed in relation to the ecology of the extant species and the palaeoenvironments of known Ripogonaceae fossil sites. The fossil (albeit on leaf characters) was placed close to the base of a black-fruited, Australian endemic Ripogonum clade. This suggests that the family have a long and conservative evolutionary history in association with moist forests, with the fossil locality showing palaeoclimate similar to the environments that most Ripogonum species still occupy today.
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COOPER, BARRY J., and JAMES B. JAGO. "ROBERT BEDFORD (1874–1951), THE KYANCUTTA MUSEUM, AND A UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION TO INTERNATIONAL GEOLOGY." Earth Sciences History 37, no. 2 (January 1, 2018): 416–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.17704/1944-6178-37.2.416.
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Robert Bedford (1874–1951), based in the isolated community of Kyancutta in South Australia, was a unique contributor to world geology, specifically in the field of meteorites and fossil archaeocyatha. Born Robert Arthur Buddicom in Shropshire, UK, he was an Oxford graduate who worked as a scientist in Freiberg, Naples, Birmingham and Shrewsbury as well as with the Natural History Museum, Kensington and the Plymouth Museum in the United Kingdom. He was a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, 1899–1910. In 1915, Buddicom changed his surname to Bedford and relocated to South Australia. During the 1920s, Bedford expanded his geological interests with the establishment of a public museum in Kyancutta in 1929. This included material previously collected and stored in the United Kingdom before being sent to Australia. Bedford was very successful in collecting material from the distant Henbury meteorite craters in Australia's Northern Territory, during three separate trips in 1931–1933. He became an authority on meteorites with much Henbury material being sent to the British Museum in London. However, Bedford's work on, and collecting of, meteorites resulted in a serious rift with the South Australian scientific establishment. Bedford is best known amongst geologists for his five taxonomic papers on the superbly preserved lower Cambrian archaeocyath fossils from the Ajax Mine near Beltana in South Australia's Flinders Ranges with field work commencing in about 1932 and extending until World War II. This research, describing thirty new genera and ninety-nine new species, was published in the Memoirs of the Kyancutta Museum, a journal that Bedford personally established and financed in 1934. These papers are regularly referenced today in international research dealing with archaeocyaths.
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Poropat, Stephen F., Matt A. White, Tim Ziegler, Adele H. Pentland, Samantha L. Rigby, Ruairidh J. Duncan, Trish Sloan, and David A. Elliott. "A diverse Late Cretaceous vertebrate tracksite from the Winton Formation of Queensland, Australia." PeerJ 9 (June 17, 2021): e11544. http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11544.
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The Upper Cretaceous ‘upper’ Winton Formation of Queensland, Australia is world famous for hosting Dinosaur Stampede National Monument at Lark Quarry Conservation Park, a somewhat controversial tracksite that preserves thousands of tridactyl dinosaur tracks attributed to ornithopods and theropods. Herein, we describe the Snake Creek Tracksite, a new vertebrate ichnoassemblage from the ‘upper’ Winton Formation, originally situated on Karoola Station but now relocated to the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History. This site preserves the first sauropod tracks reported from eastern Australia, a small number of theropod and ornithopod tracks, the first fossilised crocodyliform and ?turtle tracks reported from Australia, and possible lungfish and actinopterygian feeding traces. The sauropod trackways are wide-gauge, with manus tracks bearing an ungual impression on digit I, and anteriorly tapered pes tracks with straight or concave forward posterior margins. These tracks support the hypothesis that at least one sauropod taxon from the ‘upper’ Winton Formation retained a pollex claw (previously hypothesised for Diamantinasaurus matildae based on body fossils). Many of the crocodyliform trackways indicate underwater walking. The Snake Creek Tracksite reconciles the sauropod-, crocodyliform-, turtle-, and lungfish-dominated body fossil record of the ‘upper’ Winton Formation with its heretofore ornithopod- and theropod-dominated ichnofossil record.
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Osborne, R. "Red Earth and Bones: the History of Cave Sediment Studies in New South Wales, Australia." Earth Sciences History 10, no. 1 (January 1, 1991): 13–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.17704/eshi.10.1.e132047518j87216.
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Red earth and bones are an enduring theme in the history of cave sediment studies in New South Wales. Scientific studies of cave sediments began with the discovery of fossil bones in red cave earth at Wellington Caves in the 1830's. Three distinct phases in the study of cave sediments in New South Wales can be recognised. In the first. Classical, phase, from 1830 to 1900, leading naturalists and geologists visited caves and reported the presence of sediments. Red earth was sought as an indicator of vertebrate fossils, however, neither the sediment itself, nor its stratigraphy was studied to any extent. In the second, Low Activity, phase, from 1900 till 1966, there was little scientific interest in cave sediments. Some work was done on phosphorites, and mention was made of both palaeokarst and possible correlation of sequences between different cave areas. The third, Modern, phase began in 1966 with the work of R. M. Frank, who for the first time examined both the composition and stratigraphy of cave sediments in New South Wales. Following Frank, cave sediment studies became specialised with a variety of sedimentological, chemical and stratigraphic approaches being taken.
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Branagan, David. "The Desert Sandstone of Australia A Late Nineteenth-Century Enigma of Deposition, Fossils, and Weathering." Earth Sciences History 23, no. 2 (January 1, 2004): 208–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.17704/eshi.23.2.gj680520775h7m27.
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The term "Desert Sandstone" was featured on geological maps and in the literature of Australian geology for more than eighty years from 1872. The name was suggested by Richard Daintree (1832-1878) (1868) for what were later described as "a promiscuous lot of sediments that form a dissected tableland in some of the drier portions of the continent" (Howchin, 1918). The name became current, particularly in Queensland, but there were many problems in mapping the unit, which was at first thought to be of Tertiary age, but then became largely accepted as Late Cretaceous.While some geologists thought the unit was of marine origin, others believed it was aeolian, even partly made of volcanic dust, but most geologists thought it was largely lacustrine. In many areas the rock appeared to be highly silicified, and opinions differed as to the source of silicification—a former covering of basalt, or siliceous hot waters from below?Complications arose when Glossopteris, regarded as a Late Palaeozoic fossil, was found in the "Desert Sandstone," and arguments arose about the possibility of this plant having persisted in Australia until the late Mesozoic.The stratigraphic/palaeontological problems were eventually sorted out by detailed mapping, which showed that there were in fact a number of sandstones of similar appearance but quite different ages. It took longer to realise that the apparent uniformity of sedimentary rocks of different ages was largely the result of weathering, which produced the silicified "duricrust" in many parts of inland Australia.The "Desert Sandstone" played an important part in the unravelling of three important lines of earth history in Australia (and there were even repercussions abroad). These were: (a) sedimentation during the Mesozoic and Cainozoic; (b) the clarification of the temporal range (and lateral extent) of the Glossopteris flora; and (c) the weathering processes that produced some of the characteristic scenery of inland Australia.
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Archbold, N. "Nineteenth Century Views on the Australian Marine Permian." Earth Sciences History 5, no. 1 (January 1, 1986): 12–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.17704/eshi.5.1.au03316525485655.
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Marine Permian sequences and faunas are widely distributed on the Australian continent and Tasmania. Marine fossils were found in eastern Australia as early as 1804 and were first described in 1825. Progressive investigations during the nineteenth century established the essential constituents of the eastern Australian faunas and the general nature of the sedimentary sequences. Nevertheless the faunas were invariably ascribed by local stratigraphers to the Carboniferous System, or after 1879 when the term Permo-Carboniferous was introduced by Robert Etheridge Jr, to the latter age. Rarely, a Permian age was indicated for the sequence.Western Australian Marine faunas were not studied systematically until the 1880s and available collections were small. However, even these early studies revealed few similarities with eastern faunas. Western faunas were invariably referred to the Carboniferous Period until well into the twentieth century.
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Kear, Benjamin P., and Michael S. Y. Lee. "A primitive protostegid from Australia and early sea turtle evolution." Biology Letters 2, no. 1 (November 15, 2005): 116–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0406.
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Sea turtles (Chelonioidea) are a prominent group of modern marine reptiles whose early history is poorly understood. Analysis of exceptionally well preserved fossils of Bouliachelys suteri gen. et sp. nov., a large-bodied basal protostegid (primitive chelonioid) from the Early Cretaceous (Albian) of Australia, indicates that early sea turtles were both larger and more diverse than previously thought. The analysis implies at least five distinct sea turtle lineages existed around 100 million years ago. Currently, the postcranially primitive Ctenochelys and Toxochelys are interpreted as crown-group sea turtles closely related to living cheloniids (e.g. Chelonia ); in contrast, the new phylogeny suggests that they are transitional (intermediate stem-taxa) between continental testudines and derived, pelagic chelonioids.
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Baird, Robert F. "Avian fossils from Quaternary deposits in "Green Waterhole Cave", south-eastern South Australia." Records of the Australian Museum 37, no. 6 (December 23, 1985): 353–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.3853/j.0067-1975.37.1985.332.
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Wilf, Peter. "From Patagonia to Indonesia: plant fossils highlight West Gondwanan legacy in the Malesian flora." Berita Sedimentologi 47, no. 3 (December 28, 2021): 81–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.51835/bsed.2021.47.3.367.
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Rainforests with the chinquapin Castanopsis and the yellowwood conifer Dacrycarpus occur today throughout Indonesia and the larger Malesian ecoregion, but they represent, in part, a history of survival stretching tens of millions of years and thousands of kilometers to the palaeo-Antarctic. Unlike New World and African tropical rainforests, the Malesian flora’s history is closely tied to tectonic introductions from exotic terranes, and thus, much palaeobotanical data about the origins of the Malesian rainforest comes from those terranes. For example, South America, Antarctica, and Australia remained adjacent until the Eocene final separation of Gondwana, and warm climates promoted high-latitude dispersals among those landmasses. Australia’s subsequent northward movement led to the late Oligocene Sahul-Sunda collision and the uplift of New Guinea, allowing the introductions into Malesia of survivor taxa that were once widespread in mesic Gondwanan rainforests. In Patagonian Argentina, the prolific Laguna del Hunco (52.2 Ma) site preserves abundant and well-preserved fossils of an unexpectedly large number of lineages whose living relatives characteristically associate in perhumid, lower montane “oak-laurel” rainforests of Malesia, especially in New Guinea. These taxa include the angiosperms Castanopsis (Fagaceae), Gymnostoma (rhu, Casuarinaceae), Alatonucula (extinct engelhardioid Juglandaceae), Eucalyptus (gums, Myrtaceae), Ceratopetalum (coachwood, Cunoniaceae), Lauraceae (laurel family), and Ripogonum (supplejack, Ripogonaceae); conifers in Cupressaceae (cypress family: Papuacedrus), Araucariaceae (dammars and relatives: Agathis and Araucaria Section Eutacta), and Podocarpaceae (yellowwoods: Dacrycarpus, Podocarpus, and a species similar to Phyllocladus); and the fern Todea (king fern, Osmundaceae). Many of these records are the only occurrences of the respective taxa in South America, living or fossil, vastly extending their past ranges and thus the biogeographic history of part of the Malesian mountain flora. The living-fossil taxa inhabit, and several dominate, critical watershed areas of high endemism and biodiversity in Malesia’s endangered tropical-montane rainforests. In Malesia itself, there have been very few Cenozoic palaeobotanical investigations for about a century or more. To remedy this situation and improve understanding of the evolution of the Malesian flora in situ, we have begun palaeobotanical fieldwork in collaboration with Professor Yahdi Zaim and ITB, along with international colleagues. So far, we have discovered several promising new fossil sites in the Eocene-Oligocene of West Sumatra (Sangkarewang and Sawahlunto formations) and South Kalimantan (Tanjung Formation), and I will report preliminary observations.
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Riseley, C. J., E. Bonnassieux, T. Vernstrom, T. J. Galvin, A. Chokshi, A. Botteon, K. Rajpurohit, et al. "Radio fossils, relics, and haloes in Abell 3266: cluster archaeology with ASKAP-EMU and the ATCA." Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 515, no. 2 (August 1, 2022): 1871–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac1771.
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ABSTRACT Abell 3266 is a massive and complex merging galaxy cluster that exhibits significant substructure. We present new, highly sensitive radio continuum observations of Abell 3266 performed with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (0.8–1.1 GHz) and the Australia Telescope Compact Array (1.1–3.1 GHz). These deep observations provide new insights into recently reported diffuse non-thermal phenomena associated with the intracluster medium, including a ‘wrong-way’ relic, a fossil plasma source, and an as-yet unclassified central diffuse ridge, which we reveal comprises the brightest part of a large-scale radio halo detected here for the first time. The ‘wrong-way’ relic is highly atypical of its kind: it exhibits many classical signatures of a shock-related radio relic, while at the same time exhibiting strong spectral steepening. While radio relics are generally consistent with a quasi-stationary shock scenario, the ‘wrong-way’ relic is not. We study the spectral properties of the fossil plasma source; it exhibits an ultrasteep and highly curved radio spectrum, indicating an extremely aged electron population. The larger scale radio halo fills much of the cluster centre, and presents a strong connection between the thermal and non-thermal components of the intracluster medium, along with evidence of substructure. Whether the central diffuse ridge is simply a brighter component of the halo, or a mini-halo, remains an open question. Finally, we study the morphological and spectral properties of the multiple complex radio galaxies in this cluster in unprecedented detail, tracing their evolutionary history.
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Downes, Peter, Kenneth McNamara, and Alex Bevan. "Encounters with Charles Hartt, Louis Agassiz and the Diamonds of Bahia: The Geological Activities of the Reverend Charles Grenfell Nicolay in Brazil, 1858-1869." Earth Sciences History 33, no. 1 (January 1, 2014): 10–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.17704/eshi.33.1.95872j4m742v2g24.
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The Reverend Charles Grenfell Nicolay (1815-1897) made an important contribution to early geological work in Western Australia as a scientific adviser to the Colonial government and founder of the Colony's first public collection of rocks, minerals and fossils. During his early career he taught geography at King's and Queen's Colleges in London, before leaving London in 1858 to serve as the Anglican Church Chaplain to the British residents in the city of Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. We describe here some of his geological activities in Brazil over the period 1858-1869. He assisted Charles Frederick Hartt (1840-1878) and Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) on the Thayer Expedition of 1865-1866 in their geological investigations of the province of Bahia, most notably providing geological descriptions of the diamond deposits of the Chapada Diamantina, then a diamond province of world importance. After returning to England, he presented his findings on the Chapada Diamantina to the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Norwich in 1868. From May to August 1869, he made a brief return visit to Brazil acting as a geological advisor to the Brazilian Turba Company, who were hoping to exploit bituminous sedimentary deposits adjacent to the Bahia de Camamu, Bahia, in the production of oil and gas. Following his arrival in Western Australia, he corresponded with the Reverend William B. Clarke (1798-1878), in 1871-1872, on the subject of Brazilian diamonds, as Clarke sought to understand the diamond occurrences in eastern Australia. Through Clarke, Nicolay's description of the geology of the Chapada Diamantina was circulated to the Australian scientific community.
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Yin, Zi-Wei, Erik Tihelka, Jesus Lozano-Fernandez, and Chen-Yang Cai. "The first fossil Hybocephalini (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Pselaphinae) from the middle Eocene of Europe and its evolutionary and biogeographic implications." Arthropod Systematics & Phylogeny 80 (July 19, 2022): 279–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/asp.80.e82644.
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The extant tropical tribe Hybocephalini is a morphologically highly derived group of the subfamily Pselaphinae (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae), which is characterized most notably by the modified squamous setae that cover various parts of the body. Ten genera and 69 extant species have been found in the Afrotropical and Oriental regions, with one species found in northern Australia. Prior to this study the evolutionary history of the tribe has been remained elusive due to the dearth of known fossils. Here, we describe the first fossil representative of Hybocephalini, Europharinodes schaufussi Yin & Cai gen. et sp. nov., based on an adult male preserved in Baltic amber (ca 45.0–38.0 Ma). Using X-ray microtomography, the anatomy including the endoskeletal structures of the head, the full pattern of foveation, and the aedeagus of the beetle were reconstructed. Europharinodes shares most derived traits that are congruent with extant members of Hybocephalini, but it also possesses plesiomorphic and autapomorphic characters unknown in living relatives. In order to constrain the phylogenetic placement of Europharinodes, we created an updated morphological character matrix to explore relationships among this genus and related groups. A monophyletic Hybocephalini was recovered by maximum likelihood and parsimony analyses, with Europharinodes being well-resolved as sister to all modern relatives in the likelihood tree. The fossil thus sheds new light on the morphological evolution of Hybocephalini and suggests a broader palaeodistribution of the tribe during the middle Eocene. The disjunct distribution of an Eocene Baltic amber species and an extant Afrotropical-Oriental distribution of the tribe is probably relictual, and was shaped by global cooling during the Eocene–Oligocene transition.
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Sprigg, Reg. "The Adelaide Geosyncline: A Century of Controversy." Earth Sciences History 5, no. 1 (January 1, 1986): 66–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.17704/eshi.5.1.c5rn11w3001t50j1.
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Late Proterozoic (Adelaidean) to Late Cambrian sediments of the Adelaide Geosyncline form a mountainous backbone to South Australia. Geological studies of the region date back to the beginning of European exploration and colonisation, although these were limited until the 1940s due to the small, isolated nature of the geological community. No detailed understanding of this extensive region emerged until the beginning of the twentieth century when sections were measured and the significance of widespread Late Precambrian glaciation was recognised. The search for fossils has been long and often unsuccessful. Trilobites and archaeocyatha, which were later determined as Cambrian, were found as early as 1879. The internationally famous Ediacara fauna was discovered in 1946. Unusual piercement structures containing breccias were only widely mapped after World War Two with a diapiric origin being proposed in 1960. In 1952, the province was classified as basically miogeo-synclinal with a late stage eugeosyncline in the southeast. This has recently been reinterpreted in terms of plate tectonics.
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Fortey, Richard A., and Robert M. Owen. "Phylogenetic history of major trilobite clades in relation to paleoenvironment." Paleontological Society Special Publications 6 (1992): 104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s247526220000664x.
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Because trilobites occupied a wide a range of Paleozoic marine habitats they are a good group to examine hypotheses concerning the sites in which new major clades first appear, and their subsequent history of diversification and decline. There are several problems in this endeavour. The first concerns classification. Until a complete phylogenetic classification is available, there is no objective way to assess the equivalence or otherwise of groups which have been claimed as orders. For example, Odontopleurida and Lichida are treated as separate orders in some classifications, but are considered as a single major clade - presumably of ordinal status - in others. Some of the most commonly accepted groups (Olenellida, Ptychopariida) are paraphyletic. The second problem is taphonomic. The first appearance of a major group often coincides with a major extrinsic change, such as a regressive-transgressive couplet. Does the event initiate the novelty, or simply permit it to be preserved? Does such an event “punctuate” the fossil record, such that earlier, ancestral taxa belonging to the same clade go unrecognised?Trilobites are already paleogeographically diversified when they make their first appearance in the Lower Cambrian. Since trilobites constitute a true clade, this implies an earlier phase of vicariance of dispersal which is not recorded in the rocks. In China, Siberia, North America, and North Africa these first occurrences are in rocks of inshore origin: still earlier trilobites may have had thin cuticles which militated against their being preserved in the highest energy environments where “small shelly” fossils occurred. The groups Olenellida, Redlichiida, Corynexochida, Ptychopariina (?Lichida) appear in the early Cambrian. The earliest polymerids with morphology corresponding to deep water, atheloptic, is latest Lower Cambrian (Atops, Australia): there are many such in the mid-Cambrian.Opinions differ on the classification of Agnostida. Our own view relates Agnostina to Eodiscina, and on this view the early representatives of the clade (Lower Cambrian, China) are inshore compared with later agnostid occurrences, which typify outer shelf to slope. Ordovician agnostids are comparatively rare; the youngest agnostids were not confined to deep water sites.There is good evidence of early occurrences of Odontopleurida, Lichida s.s., Illaenina, Proetida and Phacopida in shallow water deposits. Evidence from Asaphida is more equivocal. Colonisation of deeper water habitats from shallow is rapid, although not achieved at the same time in each group. The scenario is of repeated production of deeper water forms from shelf taxa rather than wholesale movement of clades into that environment. After the demise of other groups in the late Devonian, for example, in the youngest Devonian and Carboniferous proetides radiated into deep water habitats. But the last trilobites of all in the Permian were shallow shelf inhabitants.
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Shillito, Anthony P., and Neil S. Davies. "The Tumblagooda Sandstone revisited: exceptionally abundant trace fossils and geological outcrop provide a window onto Palaeozoic littoral habitats before invertebrate terrestrialization." Geological Magazine 157, no. 12 (April 13, 2020): 1939–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0016756820000199.
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AbstractThe establishment of permanent animal communities on land was a defining event in the history of evolution, and one for which the ichnofauna and facies of the Tumblagooda Sandstone of Western Australia have been considered an archetypal case study. However, terrestrialization can only be understood from the rock record with conclusive sedimentological evidence for non-marine deposition, and original fieldwork on the formation shows that a marine influence was pervasive throughout all trace fossil-bearing strata. Four distinct facies associations are described, deposited in fluvial, tidal and estuarine settings. Here we explain the controversies surrounding the age and depositional environment of the Tumblagooda Sandstone, many of which have arisen due to the challenges in distinguishing marine from non-marine depositional settings in lower Palaeozoic successions. We clarify the terminological inconsistency that has hindered such determination, and demonstrate how palaeoenvironmental explanations can be expanded out from unambiguously indicative sedimentary structures. The Tumblagooda Sandstone provides a unique insight into an early Palaeozoic ichnofauna that was strongly partitioned by patchy resource distribution in a littoral setting. The influence of outcrop style and quality is accounted for to contextualize this ichnofauna, revealing six distinct low-disparity groups of trace fossil associations, each related to a different sub-environment within the high-ichnodisparity broad depositional setting. The formation is compared with contemporaneous ichnofaunas to examine its continued significance to understanding the terrestrialization process. Despite not recording permanent non-marine communities, the Tumblagooda Sandstone provides a detailed picture of the realm left behind by the first invertebrate pioneers of terrestrialization.
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Morris, S. Conway. "The persistence of Burgess Shale-type faunas: implications for the evolution of deeper-water faunas." Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 80, no. 3-4 (1989): 271–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0263593300028716.
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ABSTRACTDiscoveries, most of them recently, in more than thirty Lower and Middle Cambrian horizons with soft-bodied fossils have shown that forty-one of the genera occur also in the celebrated Burgess Shale (Middle Cambrian). Significantly, they tend to have lengthy stratigraphic durations which together encompass an interval from the early Lower Cambrian (Tommotian) to near the end of the Middle Cambrian. At least some genera have also wide geographical ranges, with occurrences around much of the Laurentian (N America) craton, and also in N and S China, Australia, Siberia, Spain and Poland. Although a few genera, e.g. Isoxys, may have been pelagic, for the most part these distributions are explained in terms of a deeper-water biota with an evolutionarily conservative aspect. Both the origins and further recruitment to this biota may have been from shallower water, with more limited in situ diversification. It is speculated that this distinctive Cambrian biota was gradually driven to extinction with the arrival of Ordovician competitors, although some relics may have survived until at least the Devonian. This history has implications for our understanding of deeper-water faunas throughout the Phanerozoic, and supports the notion that archaic forms may take refuge in this environment.
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Hill, Robert S. "Origins of the southeastern Australian vegetation." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 359, no. 1450 (October 29, 2004): 1537–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2004.1526.
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Australia is an ancient continent with an interesting geological history that includes a recent major shift in its position, both globally and compared with neighbouring land masses. This has led to a great deal of confusion over many years about the origins of the Australian biomes. The plant fossil record is now clarifying this, and it is clear that the ancient Gondwanan rainforests that covered Australia while it was still part of that supercontinent contained many of the elements of the modern vegetation. However, major climatic sifting, along with responses to other factors, including soil nutrient levels, disturbance regimes, atmospheric CO 2 levels, fire frequency and intensity, glaciations and the arrival of humans, have had profound impacts on the Australian vegetation, which today reflects the sum of all these factors and more. The origins of Australian vegetation and its present–day management cannot be properly understood without an appreciation of this vast history, and the fossil record has a vital role to play in maintaining the health of this continent's vegetation into the future.
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Byrne, Margaret, and Daniel J. Murphy. "The origins and evolutionary history of xerophytic vegetation in Australia." Australian Journal of Botany 68, no. 3 (2020): 195. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/bt20022.
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The xeromorphic vegetation is a significant component of the Australian flora and phylogenetic and phylogeographic analysis of xeromorphic plants provides a basis for understanding the origins and evolutionary history of the Australian vegetation. Here we expand on previous reviews of the origins and maintenance of the Australian flora with an emphasis on the xeromorphic component. Phylogenetic evidence supports fossil evidence for evolution of sclerophyll and xeromorphic vegetation from the Eocene with lineages becoming more common in the Oligocene and Miocene, a time of major change in climate and vegetation in Australia. Phylogenetic evidence supports the mesic biome as ancestral to the arid zone biome in Australia in phylogenies of key groups. The diversification and radiation of Australian species shows single origins of xeromorphic group mainly at deeper levels in phylogenies as well as multiple origins of arid occurring species at shallower levels. Divergence across the Nullarbor is also evident and speciation rates in south-western Australia were higher than in the south-east in several plant families. Estimates of timing of diversification generally show either constant rates of diversification or increased diversification from the mid to late Miocene. Phylogeographic studies consistently demonstrate high localised genetic diversity and geographic structure in xeromorphic species occupying both mesic and arid biomes.
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Barden, Phillip, Brendon Boudinot, and Andrea Lucky. "Where Fossils Dare and Males Matter: combined morphological and molecular analysis untangles the evolutionary history of the spider ant genus Leptomyrmex Mayr (Hymenoptera : Dolichoderinae)." Invertebrate Systematics 31, no. 6 (2017): 765. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/is16067.
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The distinctive ant genus Leptomyrmex Mayr, 1862 had been thought to be endemic to Australasia for over 150 years, but enigmatic Neotropical fossils have challenged this view for decades. The present study responds to a recent and surprising discovery of extant Leptomyrmex species in Brazil with a thorough evaluation of the Dominican Republic fossil material, which dates to the Miocene. In the first case study of direct fossil inclusion within Formicidae Latreille, 1809, we incorporated both living and the extinct Leptomyrmex species. Through simultaneous analysis of molecular and morphological characters in both Bayesian and parsimony frameworks, we recovered the fossil taxon as sister-group to extant Leptomyrmex in Brazil while considering the influence of taxonomic and character sampling on inferred hypotheses relating to tree topology, biogeography and morphological evolution. We also identified potential loss of signal in the binning of morphological characters and tested the impact of parameterisation on divergence date estimation. Our results highlight the importance of securing sufficient taxon sampling for extant lineages when incorporating fossils and underscore the utility of diverse character sources in accurate placement of fossil terminals. Specifically, we find that fossil placement in this group is influenced by the inclusion of male-based characters and the newly discovered Neotropical ‘Lazarus taxon’.
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Hill, Robert S., and Gregory J. Jordan. "Deep history of wildfire in Australia." Australian Journal of Botany 64, no. 8 (2016): 557. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/bt16169.
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Australian plant species vary markedly in their fire responses, and the evolutionary histories of the diverse range of traits that lead to fire tolerance and fire dependence almost certainly involves both exaptation and traits that evolved directly in response to fire. The hypothesis that very long-term nutrient poverty in Australian soils led to intense fires explains many of the unusual responses to fire by Australian species, as does near global distribution of evidence for fire during the Cretaceous, possibly driven by high atmospheric oxygen concentration. Recent descriptions of leaf fragments from a Late Cretaceous locality in central Australia have provided the first fossil evidence for ancient and possibly ancestral fire ecology in modern fire-dependent Australian clades, as suggested by some phylogenetic studies. The drying of the Australian climate in the Neogene allowed the rise to dominance of taxa that had their origin in the Late Cretaceous, but had not been prominent in the rainforest-dominated Paleogene. The Neogene climatic evolution meant that fire became an important feature of that environment and fire frequency and intensity began to grow to high levels, and many fire adaptations evolved. However, many plant species were already in place to take advantage of this new fire regime, and even though the original drivers for fire may have changed (possibly from high atmospheric oxygen concentrations, to long, hot, dry periods at different times in different parts of the continent), the adaptations that these species had for fire tolerance meant they could become prominent over much of the Australian continent by the time human colonisation began.
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Bennett, C. Verity, Paul Upchurch, Francisco J. Goin, and Anjali Goswami. "Deep time diversity of metatherian mammals: implications for evolutionary history and fossil-record quality." Paleobiology 44, no. 2 (February 6, 2018): 171–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/pab.2017.34.
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AbstractDespite a global fossil record, Metatheria are now largely restricted to Australasia and South America. Most metatherian paleodiversity studies to date are limited to particular subclades, time intervals, and/or regions, and few consider uneven sampling. Here, we present a comprehensive new data set on metatherian fossil occurrences (Barremian to end Pliocene). These data are analyzed using standard rarefaction and shareholder quorum subsampling (including a new protocol for handling Lagerstätte-like localities).Global metatherian diversity was lowest during the Cretaceous, and increased sharply in the Paleocene, when the South American record begins. Global and South American diversity rose in the early Eocene then fell in the late Eocene, in contrast to the North American pattern. In the Oligocene, diversity declined in the Americas, but this was more than offset by Oligocene radiations in Australia. Diversity continued to decrease in Laurasia, with final representatives in North America (excluding the later entry ofDidelphis virginiana) and Europe in the early Miocene, and Asia in the middle Miocene. Global metatherian diversity appears to have peaked in the early Miocene, especially in Australia. Following a trough in the late Miocene, the Pliocene saw another increase in global diversity. By this time, metatherian biogeographic distribution had essentially contracted to that of today.Comparison of the raw and sampling-corrected diversity estimates, coupled with evaluation of “coverage” and number of prolific sites, demonstrates that the metatherian fossil record is spatially and temporally extremely patchy. Therefore, assessments of macroevolutionary patterns based on the raw fossil record (as in most previous studies) are inadvisable.
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Hill, Robert S., Yelarney K. Beer, Kathryn E. Hill, Elizabeth Maciunas, Myall A. Tarran, and Carmine C. Wainman. "Evolution of the eucalypts – an interpretation from the macrofossil record." Australian Journal of Botany 64, no. 8 (2016): 600. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/bt16117.
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Eucalypts have influenced the fire ecology of the Australian landscape more than any other plant group. They are the iconic plant taxon in the Australian vegetation today, but their origin, early evolution and migration remain poorly understood, mostly because of a remarkably sparse and underworked fossil record. However, a recent major macrofossil find in southern South America, coupled with increasing sophistication of molecular phylogenetic and palynological research allow for a more comprehensive summary of the likely early history of this group of genera. It is likely that the origin was close to the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, somewhere in the Weddellian Biogeographic Province (which includes southern South America, western Antarctica and south-eastern Australia), in an area with high natural fire frequency. Evidence for the early record of eucalypts in Australia and their eventual spread across the continent, leading to their current dominance of the Australian plant biomass is growing and is consistent with a drying climate and increasing fire frequency following a very wet period during the Paleogene. The causes of the extinction of eucalypts from South America and probably New Zealand are considered, but remain obscure.
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Greenwood, DR. "Eocene monsoon forests in central Australia?" Australian Systematic Botany 9, no. 2 (1996): 95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/sb9960095.
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The Australian Tertiary plant fossil record documents rainforests of a tropical to temperate character in south-eastern and south-western Australia for much of the Early Tertiary, and also shows the climatically mediated contraction of these rainforests in the mid to Late Tertiary. The fossil record of Australian monsoon forests, that is semi-evergreen to deciduous vine forests and woodlands of the wet-dry tropics, however, is poorly known. Phytogeographic analyses have suggested an immigrant origin for some floral elements of present day monsoon forests in northern Australia, while other elements appear to have a common history with the tropical rainforests sensu stricto and/or the sclerophyllous flora. Early Tertiary macrofloras in northern South Australia may provide some insight into the origins of Australian tropical monsoon forests. The Middle Eocene macrofloras of the Poole Creek palaeochannel, and the ?Eocene-Oligocene silcrete macrofloras of Stuart Creek, both in the vicinity of modern Lake Eyre South, have foliar physiognomic characteristics which distinguish them from both modern rainforest and Eocene-Oligocene floras from south-eastern Australia. Preliminary systematic work on these floras suggests the presence of: (1) elements not associated today with monsoon forests (principally 'rainforest' elements, e.g. Gymnostoma, cf. Lophostemon, cf. Athertonia, Podocarpaceae, ?Cunoniaceae); (2) elements typical of both monsoon forests and other tropical plant communities (e.g. cf. Eucalyptus, cf. Syzygium, and Elaeocarpaceae); (3) elements likely to be reflecting sclerophyllous communities (e.g. cf. Eucalyptus, Banksieae and other Proteaceae); and (4) elements more typically associated with, but not restricted to, monsoon forests (e.g. Brachychiton). The foliar physiognomic and floristic evidence is interpreted as indicating a mosaic of gallery or riverine rainforests, and interfluve sclerophyllous plant communities near Lake Eyre in the Early Tertiary; deciduous forest components are not clearly indicated. Palaeoclimatic analysis of the Eocene Poole Creek floras suggests that rainfall was seasonal in the Lake Eyre area in the Eocene; however, whether this seasonality reflects a monsoonal airflow is not clear.
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Macarow, Keely. "Dispatches from the age of fire." Book 2.0 11, no. 1 (August 1, 2021): 9–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/btwo_00039_1.
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In 2019–2020, fires ravaged large areas of Australia devastating land, infrastructure and human and non-human lives. While Australia has a history of fires and fire management, large regions of the eastern states were devastated by super fires fueled by their own weather, and changes to the climate. However, Australian governments, political and business leaders continue to invest in fossil fuels and disregard the impact of the climate crisis. Meanwhile, the nation is at a tipping point due to the effects of global heating, extreme weather events, natural disasters and biodiversity loss. This article explores the climate crisis through a discussion of first-hand accounts of people directly affected by the 2019–2020 bushfires in Australia. These harrowing and philosophical accounts of the fires were gleaned from poetry, videos, websites and non-fiction sources and demonstrate the human lived experiences of the climate crisis and how we can move forward for climate justice.
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Roslov, M. S. "Reconstruction of the dispersal history of Winteraceae R. Br. ex Lindl. according to phylogenetic analysis." Проблемы ботаники Южной Сибири и Монголии 21, no. 2 (November 17, 2022): 175–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.14258/pbssm.2022078.
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Winteraceae family consists of 5 genera that are disjunctly distributed in Madagascar, Australasia, Central and South America. Phylogenetic relationships in Winteraceae were reconstructed using the molecular data (ITS-5.8S rDNA and trnL-trnF sequences). Paleobotanical data indicate the origin of Winteraceae in the north of Gondwana in the Lower Cretaceous. The calibration of the phylogenetic tree with 3 fossil records allowed to estimate the divergence time of Takhtajania at ca. 77 Ma, which correlates with the fragmentation of Eastern Gondwana (ca. 84-95 Ma). The origin of Drimys was caused by the breakup of Antarctica and Australia. Disjunctions in Zygogynum can be explained by several episodes of long-distance dispersal.
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Truswell, EM. "Vegetation in the Australian Tertiary in Response to Climatic and Phytogeographic Forcing Factors*." Australian Systematic Botany 6, no. 6 (1993): 533. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/sb9930533.
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Nancy Burbidge's 1960 paper on the phytogeography of the Australian region would make a fitting starting point for a review of the impact of the plant fossil record on understanding Australian vegetation history. However, a number of reviews were published in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so that the present overview takes its starting point from that time and considers the advances in research since then. In the interval since, information has accrued from both palynology and plant macrofossils, so that the fossil evidence must now be considered a primary source of data for interpreting the evolution of Australian vegetation. There have also been major advances in understanding the geological framework of the Tertiary, against which the fossil data must be set. For instance, the timescale against which advances must be measured has been refined, there have been comprehensive syntheses of Tertiary palaeogeography, and a better understanding of the relationships, through time, of Australia with continents to the north, and between Australia and Antarctica. Our understanding of the climatic factors affecting the continent and its vegetation has also improved. The record now available, in spite of its many limitations, gives a general picture of transition from widespread, very diverse rainforests in the early Tertiary, to predominantly open vegetation with rainforest restricted to wetter regions. Some aspects of the early forests remain insufficiently understood; for instance, the effects of high latitude position on forest growth. The development of sclerophylly may go back as far as the Eocene, with Banksia and Acacia now having records that extend back that far. The development of open vegetation types was probably linked with changing fire regimes; we know that by the mid-Miocene, heath-like vegetation was established locally in coal swamps. Rainforests of drier aspect were established early too, probably first at inland localities, and there are hints of wet sclerophyll forest by the late Miocene. The history of grasslands and savannah remains sketchy, and no modem analogues can be identified for vegetation types in the Pliocene that were rich in Asteraceae and grasses. The history of the eucalypts, and their links to specific fire regimes, is a more recent story.* The Nancy Burbridge Memorial Lecture, which was presented at the 'Southem Temperate Ecosystems' conference, held in Hobart, Tasmania, 18–22 January 1993.
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EDLUND, MARK B., and NORMAN A. ANDRESEN. "A brief history of the International Diatom Symposium." Phytotaxa 127, no. 1 (August 29, 2013): 6. http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.127.1.4.
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The International Diatom Symposium began as the "First Symposium on Recent and Fossil Marine Diatoms" in Bremerhaven, Germany in 1970 with 15 diatomists in attendance. The informal group decided to meet on a biennial basis with meetings moving to different venues across Europe. The group grew with each of the early meetings and came to recognize the need to include both marine and freshwater researchers at the symposium. At the fifth meeting of the group, the name was changed to reflect this; the "Fifth Symposium on Recent and Fossil Diatoms" was held in Antwerp, Belgium in 1978. The meeting eventually adopted the name "International Diatom Symposium" at the 1982 seventh meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. In 1986, at the Ninth International Diatom Symposium in Bristol, UK, the International Society for Diatom Research (ISDR) was formally established and has used the International Diatom Symposium to hold their biennial meetings of the Council and the Society. The IDS continues as a biennial gathering of international diatomists with symposia venues proposed by members, subjected to member vote, and given final council approval. The Society has encouraged meetings beyond European and American venues; notable venues have included the first Asian meeting (Fourteenth International Diatom Symposium, in Tokyo, Japan), the first Australian meeting (Fifteenth International Diatom Symposium, in Perth, Australia), and a symposium held in Russia (Nineteenth International Diatom Symposium in Irkutsk, Russia).
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Muona, J. "The eucnemidae of South-East Asia and the Western Pacific — a biogeographical study." Australian Systematic Botany 4, no. 1 (1991): 165. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/sb9910165.
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Eighty-nine eucnemid genera occur in the region from South-east Asia to the south-west Pacific. The phylogenies of 84 of these were used together with the present-day distributions of the species to analyse the biogeographical history of the area. Fifty-seven genera shared a pattern coinciding with the traditional model of Laurasia–Gondwana break-up. Six genera showed a pattern contradicting the model. The remaining 21 genera neither supported nor refuted the model. Twenty-five genera were observed to include an Indomalesian clade younger than the South America–Australia connection. This biogeographical unit consisted of present-day South-east Asia and the Sunda islands, but did not include the Philippine Islands and Sulawesi. In addition to this Indomalesian clade, three separate clades involving northern Australia or New Guinea were observed, New Guinea–Australia, New Guinea–Philippines–Sulawesi and New Guinea–Fiji. The possible presence of four separate areas in the general region of New Guinea–north Australia as the result of the Cretaceous geological events is suggested. Three of these, in the area of present-day New Guinea, originally sharing sister-groups with the north-eastern Australian isolate, are regarded as the sources of the New Guinea–Indomalesia, New Guinea–Philippines and New Guinea–Fiji faunas after northward drifting of the Australian continent. During the Oligocene–Miocene these source areas were flooded and their original fauna lost. When the present-day New Guinea emerged, it was invaded from the north-eastern Australian region. This invasion created new New Guinea–Australia connections and brought in the sister-groups of the old New Guinea source areas as well. The eucnemids of Vanuatu, Samoa and Tonga are regarded as having originated in connection with dispersal from Fiji. The New Zealand fauna has strong, old connections with that of south-eastern Australia, but other complex connections are indicated. The Eocene Baltic Amber fauna agrees well with the results obtained from extant species. The species belonging to five fossil genera belong to Gondwanan groups that seem to have invaded the Holarctic via Central America. Four other fossil genera showing discordant patterns belong to the group of six genera exhibiting these aberrant patterns even today. The eucnemid fauna of the region is of Gondwanic origin. Only six Laurasian genera have invaded the area, all of them apparently quite recently.
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Pennington, R. Toby, Quentin C. B. Cronk, and James A. Richardson. "Introduction and synthesis: plant phylogeny and the origin of major biomes." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 359, no. 1450 (October 29, 2004): 1455–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2004.1539.
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Phylogenetic trees based upon DNA sequence data, when calibrated with a dimension of time, allow inference of: (i) the pattern of accumulation of lineages through time; (ii) the time of origin of monophyletic groups; (iii) when lineages arrived in different geographical areas; (iv) the time of origin of biome–specific morphologies. This gives a powerful new view of the history of biomes that in many cases is not provided by the incomplete plant fossil record. Dated plant phylogenies for angiosperm families such as Leguminoaceae (Fabaceae), Melastomataceae sensu stricto , Annonaceae and Rhamnaceae indicate that long–distance, transoceanic dispersal has played an important role in shaping their distributions, and that this can obscure any effect of tectonic history, previously assumed to have been the major cause of their biogeographic patterns. Dispersal from other continents has also been i mportant in the assembly of the Amazonian rainforest flora and the Australian flora. Comparison of dated biogeographic patterns of plants and animals suggests that recent long–distance dispersal might be more prevalent in plants, which has major implications for community assembly and coevolution. Dated plant phylogenies also reveal the role of past environmental changes on the evolution of lineages in species–rich biomes, and show that recent Plio–Pleistocene diversification has contributed substantially to their current species richness. Because of the critical role of fossils and morphological characters in assigning ages to nodes in phylogenetic trees, future studies must include careful morphological consideration of fossils and their extant relatives in a phylogenetic context. Ideal study systems will be based upon DNA sequence data from multiple loci and multiple fossil calibrations. This allows cross–validation both of age estimates from different loci, and from different fossil calibrations. For a more complete view of biome history, future studies should emphasize full taxon sampling in ecologically important groups, and should focus on geographical areas for which few species–level phylogenies are available, such as tropical Africa and Asia. These studies are urgent because understanding the history of biomes can both inform conservation decisions, and help predict the effects of future environmental changes at a time when biodiversity is being impacted on an unprecedented scale.
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Oliveros, Carl H., Daniel J. Field, Daniel T. Ksepka, F. Keith Barker, Alexandre Aleixo, Michael J. Andersen, Per Alström, et al. "Earth history and the passerine superradiation." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 16 (April 1, 2019): 7916–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1813206116.
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Avian diversification has been influenced by global climate change, plate tectonic movements, and mass extinction events. However, the impact of these factors on the diversification of the hyperdiverse perching birds (passerines) is unclear because family level relationships are unresolved and the timing of splitting events among lineages is uncertain. We analyzed DNA data from 4,060 nuclear loci and 137 passerine families using concatenation and coalescent approaches to infer a comprehensive phylogenetic hypothesis that clarifies relationships among all passerine families. Then, we calibrated this phylogeny using 13 fossils to examine the effects of different events in Earth history on the timing and rate of passerine diversification. Our analyses reconcile passerine diversification with the fossil and geological records; suggest that passerines originated on the Australian landmass ∼47 Ma; and show that subsequent dispersal and diversification of passerines was affected by a number of climatological and geological events, such as Oligocene glaciation and inundation of the New Zealand landmass. Although passerine diversification rates fluctuated throughout the Cenozoic, we find no link between the rate of passerine diversification and Cenozoic global temperature, and our analyses show that the increases in passerine diversification rate we observe are disconnected from the colonization of new continents. Taken together, these results suggest more complex mechanisms than temperature change or ecological opportunity have controlled macroscale patterns of passerine speciation.
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Martin, Helene A. "History of the family Malpighiaceae in Australia and its biogeographic implications: evidence from pollen." Australian Journal of Botany 50, no. 2 (2002): 171. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/bt01039.
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Three pollen types of the family Malpighiaceae have been identified in the Tertiary fossil record of south-eastern Australia. There are two species of the family native to Australia and they have the same pollen type. There was thus a greater diversity of malpighiaceous taxa during the Tertiary than there is today. The family is found mainly in tropical regions and it is thought that northern South America was the centre of origin. The restriction of the two species to coastal north-eastern Australia suggests recent migration into the area and gives no hint of the long history of the family in Australia.
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Taylor, Michael A., and L. I. Anderson. "The museums of a local, national and supranational hero: Hugh Miller's collections over the decades." Geological Curator 10, no. 7 (August 2017): 285–368. http://dx.doi.org/10.55468/gc242.
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Hugh Miller (1802-1856), Scottish geologist, newspaper editor and writer, is a perhaps unique example of a geologist with a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace cottage, in Cromarty, northern Scotland. He finally housed his geological collection, principally of Scottish fossils, in a purpose-built museum at his house in Portobello, now in Edinburgh. After his death, the collection was purchased in 1859 by Government grant and public appeal, in part as a memorial to Miller, for the Natural History Museum (successively Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, Royal Scottish Museum, and part of National Museums Scotland). The collection's documentation, curation and display over the years are outlined, using numerical patterns in the documentation as part of the evidence for its history. A substantial permanent display of the Miller Collection, partly by the retired Benjamin Peach (1842-1926), was installed from c. 1912 to 1939, and briefly postwar. A number of temporary displays, and one small permanent display, were thereafter created, especially for the 1952 and 2002 anniversaries. Miller's birthplace cottage was preserved by the family and a museum established there in 1885 by Miller's son Hugh Miller the younger (1850-1896) of the Geological Survey, with the assistance of his brother Lieutenant-Colonel William Miller (1842-1893) of the Indian Army, and the Quaker horticulturalist Sir Thomas Hanbury (c. 1832-1907), using a selection of specimens retained by the family in 1859. It may not have been fully opened to the public till 1888. It was refurbished for the 1902 centenary. A proposal to open a Hugh Miller Institute in Cromarty, combining a library and museum, to mark the centenary, was only partly successful, and the library element only was built. The cottage museum was transferred to the Cromarty Burgh Council in 1926 and the National Trust for Scotland in 1938. It was refurbished for the 1952 and just after the 2002 anniversaries, with transfer of some specimens and MSS to the Royal Scottish Museum and National Library of Scotland. The Cottage now operates as the Hugh Miller Birthplace Cottage and Museum together with Miller House, another family home, next door, with further specimens loaned by National Museums Scotland. The hitherto poorly understood fate of Miller's papers is outlined. They are important for research and as display objects. Most seem to have been lost, especially through the early death of his daughter Harriet Davidson (1839-1883) in Australia. Miller's collection illustrates some of the problems and opportunities of displaying named geological collections in museums, and the use of manuscripts and personalia with them. The exhibition strategies can be shown to respond to changing perceptions of Miller, famous in his time but much less well known latterly. There is, in retrospect, a clear long-term pattern of collaboration between museums and libraries in Edinburgh, Cromarty and elsewhere, strongly coupled to the fifty-year cycle of the anniversaries of Miller's birth.
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Dettmann, Mary E., and David M. Jarzen. "The Early History of the Proteaceae in Australia: the Pollen Record." Australian Systematic Botany 11, no. 4 (1998): 401. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/sb97022.
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The early history of the Proteaceae in Australia is traced from the record of fossil pollen that possess characters having taxonomic resolution among extant members of the family. Pollen characters useful for segregating subfamilies and generic groups are apertural number and form together with exine stratification and structure. When considered in conjunction with pollen shape, polarity, and size and exine sculpturing, they may be used to discriminate generic and/or species groups. The fossil pollen record suggests that the family originated in northern Gondwana during the late Cenomanian and radiated by as yet unidentified routes into southern high latitudes during the Turonian. There the family underwent substantial differentiation and expansion during Santonian–Maastrichtian times when at least four of the seven extant subfamilies evolved. Although diversification in Australia principally involved rainforest lineages (e.g. Macadamia–Helicia, Carnarvonia, Gevuina) ancestors of some sclerophyllous taxa (e.g. Adenanthos) also differentiated; this occurred in a regionalised vegetation of mesotherm open-forests in which podocarps and araucarians were important. Subsequent (Paleocene–Eocene) diversification and consolidation of the family may have focused on introduction and expansion of sclerophyllous lineages (e.g. Isopogon, Petrophile), but rainforest elements (e.g. Embothrium) were also involved. The associated vegetation, which was regionalised, experienced considerable floristic modifications during this time with introductions and/or expansion of an array of angiosperm taxa, notably Casuarinaceae, Myrtaceae and Nothofagus. In southern regions a marked decline in proteaceous pollen diversity and abundance occurred near the end of the Eocene, whereas in north-eastern regions the decline may have been later, during the Miocene.
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Doyle, James A., and Annick Le Thomas. "Phylogeny and Geographic History of Annonaceae." Palynologie et changements globaux : XIVe symposium de l’Association des palynologues de langue française 51, no. 3 (November 30, 2007): 353–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/033135ar.
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ABSTRACT Whereas Takhtajan and Smith situated the origin of angiosperms between Southeast Asia and Australia, Walker and Le Thomas emphasized the concentration of primitive pollen types of Annonaceae in South America and Africa, suggesting instead a Northern Gondwanan origin for this family of primitive angiosperms. A cladistic analysis of Annonaceae shows a basal split of the family into Anaxagorea, the only genus with an Asian and Neotropical distribution, and a basically African and Neotropical line that includes the rest of the family. Several advanced lines occur in both Africa and Asia, one of which reaches Australia. This pattern may reflect the following history: (a) disjunction of Laurasian (Anaxagorea) and Northern Gondwanan lines in the Early Cretaceous, when interchanges across the Tethys were still easy and the major lines of Magnoliidae are documented by paleobotany; (b) radiation of the Northern Gondwanan line during the Late Cretaceous, while oceanic barriers were widening; (c) dispersal of African lines into Laurasia due to northward movement of Africa and India in the Early Tertiary, attested by the presence of fossil seeds of Annonaceae in Europe, and interchanges between North and South America at the end of the Tertiary.
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Archer, M., R. Arena, M. Bassarova, K. Black, J. Brammall, B. Cooke, P. Creaser, et al. "The Evolutionary History and Diversity of Australian Mammals." Australian Mammalogy 21, no. 1 (1999): 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/am99001.
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Palaeodiversity and relationships of all groups of Australian mammals are reviewed. The fossil record spanning this time is of variable quality. 'Dark Ages' about which nothing is known in terms of Australian mammal evolution include the late Triassic to late Jurassic, late Cretaceous to late Paleocene and middle Eocene to middle Oligocene. Very little is known about the early Cretaceous and late Miocene. The late Oligocene to middle Miocene record documents the highest levels of biodiversity known for the continent, comparable to that which characterises the lowland rainforests of Borneo and Brazil. Order Monotremata spans at least the last 110 million years and includes four families. The enigmatic Ausktribosphenos from 115 million-year-old sediments in Victoria may represent an archaic monotreme, specialised peramurid or previously undocumented order of mammals but is unlikely to represent a placental as suggested in the initial description. Order Microbiotheria is represented in the early Eocene (~55 mya) by two genera similar in morphology to early Eocene taxa from Argentina. Order Peramelemorphia spans the early Eocene to Holocene and includes at least five families. Order Dasyuromorphia spans at least the late Oligocene to Holocene and includes at least three families. Other dasyuromorphian-like marsupials are indeterminate in terms of family-level affinities. Order Notoryctemorphia spans the early Miocene to Holocene with one family. Order Yalkaparidontia spans the late Oligocene to middle Miocene with one genus. Order Diprotodontia spans the late Oligocene to Holocene, represented throughout by three major groups: Phalangerida (eight families), Vombatomorphia (seven families) and Macropodoidea (at least three families). A possible placental condylarth (Tingamarra) has been recorded from the early Eocene. An archaeonycteridid bat (Australonycteris) is known from the early Eocene. Among bats, the late Oligocene to middle Miocene is dominated by rhinolophoids, many of which have European, Asian and African affinities. Mystacinids, megadermatids, hipposiderids and molossids are well-represented in the Oligocene to Miocene deposits. Vespertilionids are uncommon in the Oligocene to Miocene but become more diverse in the Pliocene to Holocene. Emballonurids and rhinolophids appear for the first time in the Plio-Pleistocene. Pteropodids are unknown prior to the Holocene. Murids span the early Pliocene to Holocene. In the oldest assemblage at Riversleigh, one undescribed lineage resembles archaic forms otherwise only known from the fossil records of Africa and Eurasia.
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Berry, SL. "The Potential of Fossil Mammal Middens as Indicators of Vegetation History in Central Australia." Australian Journal of Botany 39, no. 3 (1991): 305. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/bt9910305.
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The plant macrofossil contents of two fossil mammal middens were investigated. Midden MS was collected from near Mt Swan, 200 km north-east of Alice Springs in central Australia. The vegetation in this region is predominantly grassland scattered with low trees. Midden KS was collected from Kathleen Springs, 240 km west-south-west of Alice Springs. The flora in this locality is dominated by forbs and chenopods. Midden KS had a radiocarbon age of 1700 years BP at the top and 3500 years BP at the bottom. Most of the plant taxa in each midden were components in the flora of the vegetation zones currently surrounding that midden. However, the two middens, collected from different vegetation zones, shared only 33% of taxa. Similarly, only 24% of species were common to the July 1987 vegetation at the two localities. A vertical slice of midden KS was cut into 25 subsamples. No progressive change of subsample plant macrofossil assemblage with depth could be detected by Principal Components Analysis. However, there was a weak tendency for subsamples from the same level in the midden to be similar. It was concluded that mammal middens are potentially useful indicators of the vegetation history of central Australia.
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Bashford, Alison, Pratik Chakrabarti, and Jarrod Hore. "Towards a modern history of Gondwanaland." Journal of the British Academy 9s6 (2021): 5–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.5871/jba/009s6.005.
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Gondwanaland was a southern mega-continent that began to break up 180 million years ago. This article explores Gondwanaland�s modern history, its unexpected political and cultural purchase since the 1880s. Originating with geological and palaeontological research in the Gond region of Central India, �Gondwana� has become recognisable and useful, especially in settler colonial contexts. This prospectus sets out a program for a highly unusual �transnational� project, involving scholars of India, Australia, Antarctica, southern Africa and South America. Unpredictably across the five continents of former Gondwanaland, the term itself signals depth of time and place across the spectrum of Indigenous land politics, coal-based extractive politics, and, paradoxically, nationalist environmental politics. All kinds of once-living Gondwanaland biota deliver us fossil fuels today � the �gifts of Gondwana� some geologists call southern hemisphere coal, gas, petroleum � and so the modern history of Gondwanaland is also a substantive history of the Anthropocene.
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Rovinsky, Douglass S., Alistair R. Evans, and Justin W. Adams. "The pre-Pleistocene fossil thylacinids (Dasyuromorphia: Thylacinidae) and the evolutionary context of the modern thylacine." PeerJ 7 (September 2, 2019): e7457. http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7457.
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The thylacine is popularly used as a classic example of convergent evolution between placental and marsupial mammals. Despite having a fossil history spanning over 20 million years and known since the 1960s, the thylacine is often presented in both scientific literature and popular culture as an evolutionary singleton unique in its morphological and ecological adaptations within the Australian ecosystem. Here, we synthesise and critically evaluate the current state of published knowledge regarding the known fossil record of Thylacinidae prior to the appearance of the modern species. We also present phylogenetic analyses and body mass estimates of the thylacinids to reveal trends in the evolution of hypercarnivory and ecological shifts within the family. We find support that Mutpuracinus archibaldi occupies an uncertain position outside of Thylacinidae, and consider Nimbacinus richi to likely be synonymous with N. dicksoni. The Thylacinidae were small-bodied (< ~8 kg) unspecialised faunivores until after the ~15–14 Ma middle Miocene climatic transition (MMCT). After the MMCT they dramatically increase in size and develop adaptations to a hypercarnivorous diet, potentially in response to the aridification of the Australian environment and the concomitant radiation of dasyurids. This fossil history of the thylacinids provides a foundation for understanding the ecology of the modern thylacine. It provides a framework for future studies of the evolution of hypercarnivory, cursoriality, morphological and ecological disparity, and convergence within mammalian carnivores.
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LAST, PETER R., and DANIEL C. GLEDHILL. "A revision of the Australian handfishes (Lophiiformes: Brachionichthyidae), with descriptions of three new genera and nine new species." Zootaxa 2252, no. 1 (October 8, 2009): 1–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.2252.1.1.
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The family Brachionichthyidae is represented by at least 14 small, Australian endemic, lophiiform fishes distributed from central eastern Australia to the Great Australian Bight. All but three of these species occur in the seas off Tasmania. The group is comprised of two recognised genera, Brachionichthys Bleeker and Sympterichthys Gill, and three new genera, Brachiopsilus gen. nov., Pezichthys gen. nov. and Thymichthys gen. nov. Nine of the 14 species are undescribed. The type genus, Brachionichthys, consists of B. hirsutus (Lacepède) and B. australis Last, Gledhill & Holmes. These species, which are covered with long, unicuspid spinules and a strong colour pattern of dark spots and streaks, typically have 7 pectoral-fin rays. The genus Sympterichthys includes one of Australia’s earliest described fishes, S. unipennis (Cuvier), and a new taxon S. moultoni sp. nov. Members of the genus lack warts and dermal appendages on the skin but are covered in small embedded scales with adpressed, unicuspid and bicuspid spinules originating from the posterior margin of their bases. Brachiopsilus contains three new species: B. dianthus sp. nov., B. dossenus sp. nov. and B. ziebelli sp. nov. These handfishes, which are amongst the largest members of the family (reaching 117 mm SL), are smooth skinned (without spinules, dermal appendages or fleshy warts), are vividly coloured in life (without extensive blackish markings), and have 9–10 pectoral-fin rays. A fourth genus, Pezichthys, is not fully resolved and may be polyphyletic. It provisionally consists of five undescribed species: P. amplispinus sp. nov., P. compressus sp. nov., P. eltanini sp. nov., P. macropinnis sp. nov. and P. nigrocilium sp. nov. These species are variably covered in erect, bicuspid spinules, and all have 7 pectoral-fin rays. Thymichthys contains two old species-level taxa, T. politus (Richardson) and T. verrucosus (McCulloch & Waite), both previously placed in Sympterichthys. Members of the genus Thymichthys have an ornate skin variably covered with wart-like protuberances, dermal appendages and a sparse coverage of scales with their spinules not or barely penetrating the skin surface. Regional morphs exist for Thymichthys verrucosus which may represent an unresolved species complex. New study material and a molecular study of these populations across their ranges are needed to determine their relationships. Other characters useful in defining the brachionichthyid genera, and distinguishing species, include illicial morphology, coloration, characteristics of the skin, including the form and degree of coverage and exposure of spiny scales, and selected morphometrics and meristics. Historical and current ecological data confirms that these fishes have specialised habitat requirements, patchy distributions and poor dispersal capabilities, making them amongst the most vulnerable of marine fishes. The fossil record suggests that the group was once much more widespread and their restricted extant distribution in Australia may be linked to regional extinction due to their life history strategy.
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McLay, Todd G. B., Michael J. Bayly, and Pauline Y. Ladiges. "Is south-western Western Australia a centre of origin for eastern Australian taxa or is the centre an artefact of a method of analysis? A comment on Hakea and its supposed divergence over the past 12 million years." Australian Systematic Botany 29, no. 2 (2016): 87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/sb16024.
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Lamont et al. (2016) concluded that the Australian sclerophyllous genus Hakea (Proteaceae) arose 18million years ago in the South West of Western Australia (SWA) and dispersed 18 times to eastern (EA) and central Australia (CA) only 12million years ago (mid-Miocene). Their explanation of the biogeographic history of Hakea was based on the following: accepting a fully resolved molecular phylogenetic tree, although ~40% of nodes had posterior probability values below 0.95; using all nodes including geographically paralogous nodes to determine ancestral area probabilities; and applying a strict clock to estimate clade divergence times. Our re-analyses of the same dataset using a relaxed clock model pushes the age of Hakea to 32.4 (21.8–43.7) million years ago relative to its nearest outgroups, and the age of the divergence of two major clades (A and B) to 24.7 (17.2–33.7) million years ago. Calibration based on a new finding of Late Cretaceous fossil Banksia pushes these dates to 48.0 (24.3–75.2) million years ago and 36.6 (18.5–55.4) million years ago respectively. We confirm that each of the two main clades includes lineages in SWA, CA and EA. At the basal node of Clade A, two eastern Australian species form the sister group to three SWA scrub–heath–Eremaean species. These two groups together are sister to a large, mostly unresolved clade of SWA, CA and EA taxa. Similarly, at the base of Clade B is a polytomy of lineages from the SWA, CA and EA, with no resolution of area relationships. There is no evidence of a centre of origin and diversification of the genus is older than the mid-Miocene, being at least Oligocene, and probably older, although calibration points for molecular dating are too far removed from the ingroup to provide any great confidence in the methodology. Consideration should be given to the possibility of vicariance of multiple, widespread ancestral lineages as an explanation for lineages now disjunct between EA and SWA.
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Hill, Robert S., and Tim J. Brodribb. "Southern Conifers in Time and Space." Australian Journal of Botany 47, no. 5 (1999): 639. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/bt98093.
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The three southern conifer families, Araucariaceae, Cupressaceae and Podocarpaceae, have a long history and continue to be an important part of the vegetation today. The Araucariaceae have the most extensive fossil record, occurring in both hemispheres, and with Araucaria in particular having an ancient origin. In the Southern Hemisphere Araucaria and Agathis have substantial macrofossil records, especially in Australasia, and Wollemia probably also has an important macrofossil record. At least one extinct genus of Araucariaceae is present as a macrofossil during the Cenozoic. Cupressaceae macrofossils are difficult to identify in older sediments, but the southern genera begin their record in the Cretaceous (Athrotaxis) and become more diverse and extensive during the Cenozoic. Several extinct genera of Cupressaceae also occur in Cretaceous and Cenozoic sediments in Australasia. The Podocarpaceae probably begin their macrofossil record in the Triassic, although the early history is still uncertain. Occasional Podocarpaceae macrofossils have been recorded in the Northern Hemisphere, but they are essentially a southern family. The Cenozoic macrofossil record of the Podocarpaceae is extensive, especially in south-eastern Australia, where the majority of the extant genera have been recorded. Some extinct genera have also been reported from across high southern latitudes, confirming an extremely diverse and widespread suite of Podocarpaceae during the Cenozoic in the region. In the Southern Hemisphere today conifers achieve greatest abundance in wet forests. Those which compete successfully with broad-leaved angiosperms in warmer forests produce broad, flat photosynthetic shoots. In the Araucariaceae this is achieved by the planation of multiveined leaves into large compound shoots. In the other two families leaves are now limited to a single vein (except Nageia), and to overcome this limitation many genera have resorted to re-orientation of leaves and two-dimensional flattening of shoots. The Podocarpaceae show greatest development of this strategy with 11 of 19 genera producing shoots analogous to compound leaves. The concentration of conifers in wet forest left them vulnerable to the climate change which occurred in the Cenozoic, and decreases in diversity have occurred since the Paleogene in all regions where fossil records are available. Information about the history of the dry forest conifers is extremely limited because of a lack of fossilisation in such environments. The southern conifers, past and present, demonstrate an ability to compete effectively with angiosperms in many habitats and should not be viewed as remnants which are ineffectual against angiosperm competitors.
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Krause, David W., Joseph J. W. Sertich, Patrick M. O'Connor, Kristina Curry Rogers, and Raymond R. Rogers. "The Mesozoic Biogeographic History of Gondwanan Terrestrial Vertebrates: Insights from Madagascar's Fossil Record." Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 47, no. 1 (May 30, 2019): 519–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-053018-060051.
Full textAbstract:
The Mesozoic plate tectonic and paleogeographic history of Gondwana had a profound effect on the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates. As the supercontinent fragmented into a series of large landmasses (South America, Africa-Arabia, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, the Indian subcontinent, and Madagascar), particularly during the Late Jurassic and Cretaceous, its terrestrial vertebrates became progressively isolated, evolving into unique faunal assemblages. We focus on four clades that, during the Mesozoic, had relatively low ability for dispersal across oceanic barriers—crocodyliforms, sauropod dinosaurs, nonavian theropod dinosaurs, and mammals. Their distributions reveal patterns that are critically important in evaluating various biogeographic hypotheses, several of which have been informed by recent discoveries from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. We also examine the effects of lingering, intermittent connections, or reconnections, of Gondwanan landmasses with Laurasia (through the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Himalayan regions) on the distributions of different clades. ▪ This article reviews the biogeographic history of terrestrial vertebrates from the Mesozoic of the southern supercontinent Gondwana. ▪ Relatively large, terrestrial animals—including crocodyliforms, sauropod and nonavian theropod dinosaurs, and mammals—are the focus of this review. ▪ Most patterns related to vicariance occurred during the Late Jurassic and Cretaceous, the intervals of most active Gondwanan fragmentation. ▪ Recent discoveries of vertebrates from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar have played a key role in formulating and testing various biogeographic hypotheses.
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Viney, Mike, Dagmar Dietrich, and Jim Mills. "An opalized oak from Clover Creek, Lincoln County, Idaho c.1895." Journal of the History of Collections 32, no. 2 (March 5, 2019): 353–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhz007.
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Abstract According to mineralogical literature, some of the finest opalized wood in the world was discovered in Idaho c.1895, originating in a unique deposit along Clover Creek in Lincoln County (now Gooding County). The American mineral dealer Dr A. E. Foote acquired and processed the bulk of the discovery into specimens that were advertised between 1896 and 1904. Over a period of four years, we have identified sixteen natural history museums in Europe, North America, and Australia in possession of Clover Creek opalized oak today. Many museum acquisitions and the fossil’s taxonomic affinity, Quercinium pliocaenicum, resulted from collective networking between mineral dealers, private collectors and scientists – evidence of a common interest among a diversity of people – contributing the best specimens for museums of natural history.
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Schopf, J. William, Anatoliy B. Kudryavtsev, Malcolm R. Walter, Martin J. Van Kranendonk, Kenneth H. Williford, Reinhard Kozdon, John W. Valley, Victor A. Gallardo, Carola Espinoza, and David T. Flannery. "Sulfur-cycling fossil bacteria from the 1.8-Ga Duck Creek Formation provide promising evidence of evolution's null hypothesis." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 7 (February 2, 2015): 2087–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1419241112.
Full textAbstract:
The recent discovery of a deep-water sulfur-cycling microbial biota in the ∼2.3-Ga Western Australian Turee Creek Group opened a new window to life's early history. We now report a second such subseafloor-inhabiting community from the Western Australian ∼1.8-Ga Duck Creek Formation. Permineralized in cherts formed during and soon after the 2.4- to 2.2-Ga “Great Oxidation Event,” these two biotas may evidence an opportunistic response to the mid-Precambrian increase of environmental oxygen that resulted in increased production of metabolically useable sulfate and nitrate. The marked similarity of microbial morphology, habitat, and organization of these fossil communities to their modern counterparts documents exceptionally slow (hypobradytelic) change that, if paralleled by their molecular biology, would evidence extreme evolutionary stasis.
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McLean, Graham. "A “mystery fossil” is evidence for massive Devonian trees in Australia." Records of the Australian Museum 69, no. 2 (August 9, 2017): 101–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.3853/j.2201-4349.69.2017.1661.
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Lambkin, Kevin J. "Robin John Tillyard's 1936 Queensland excursion: uncivilized towns, unmitigated discomfort and fossil insects." Archives of Natural History 47, no. 1 (April 2020): 92–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/anh.2020.0624.
Full textAbstract:
Robin John Tillyard was the pre-eminent Australian entomologist of the first half of the twentieth century and a world authority on fossil insects. In May 1936, he set off on a six week, 5,000-kilometre excursion through Queensland, mostly by train, in search of new discoveries of fossil insects and insect ancestors. With a long history of serious illness and disability, he undoubtedly suffered substantial discomfort and pain during the six weeks, and, consistent with his fearless and combative personality, on his return to Brisbane in June he launched a stinging attack on Queensland's inadequate railway system, poor hotel accommodation and its many “uncivilised” towns. Tillyard's critique drew a spirited defence from the State's politicians and civic leaders, and the debate raged in the local press for the next week. Except for a large collection of fossil insects from the then recently discovered site at Mount Crosby near Brisbane (which required no train travel), and a week of now long forgotten media entertainment, Tillyard's Queensland excursion produced little. Even though this lack of success may have contributed to his negative state of mind on his return to Brisbane, he remained very enthusiastic about the new discoveries from Mount Crosby. With his tragic death in January of 1937, however, their study had to await another generation of Australian entomologists, one of whom was his son-in-law, John William Evans.