Two new camerate crinoid species from the Permian of eastern Australia |
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Authors: | RJ Willink |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Geology , Australian National University , Canberra, A.C.T., 2600;2. Shell Development (Australia) Pty. Ltd. , P.O. Box M934, Perth, W.A., 6001 |
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Abstract: | The habitat and habit of Australia's first recorded Tertiary marsupial species, Wynyardia bassiana, found some 130 years ago at Wynyard on the northwestern coast of Tasmania, remain enigmatic (Aplin 1987, Aplin &; Rich 1990). Fossil pollen and spores preserved in a rafted clast of estuarine silts from the same sequence of earliest Miocene marine sandstones as the skeletal remains indicate the local vegetation was Nothofagus-gymnosperm evergreen rainforest, probably with a cryptogam-rich rather than woody subcanopy stratum. Comparisons with present-day Nothofagus rainforests suggest that, although the subcanopy would have been sufficiently open to allow the passage of a large ground-dwelling herbivorous marsupial, limited food resources are more consistent with Wynyardia being a generalist arboreal herbivore. |
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Keywords: | Early Miocene Tasmania pollen spores habitat Nothofagus-gymnosperm rainforest Wynyardia bassiana marsupial |
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