Flora of the Little River Coal Measures
The Little River Coal Measures are exposed in a small area north of Palmerville Station in far northQueensland , Australia. Though not of economic importance, the deposits are significant in hosting the northernmost Permian plant macrofossil assemblages in Australia. The Little River Coal Measures consist of grey—brown sandstone, grey siltstone, carbonaceous shale and mudstone, minor impure coal, and cherty mudstone (Domagala et al. 1997). The coal seams are of poor quality, steeply dipping and structurally complex with little potential for development. They are faulted against the Mesoproterozoic Yambo Metamorphic Group to the west and Silurian—Devonian Chillagoe Formation to the east.
No large collections of plant fossils have been obtained from the Little River Coal Measures but an overview of the flora has been published by (White 1961) based on small collections obtained during regional geological surveys and housed at GeoscienceAustralia , Canberra. The coal measures are dated as Late Permian based on the presence of index taxa such as Schizoneura gondwanensis and Dictyopteridium sp.
NRM holds just two samples from the Little River Coal Measures (donated by the late Isabel Cookson), and these bear impressions of only two species of Glossopteris.
White, M.E. 1961c. Fossil plants from the Little River Coal Measures, in the Cooktown region of north Queensland. Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics, Australia, Record 1961/121, 1-4. (unpublished).