Fossil flora of Australia
The museum has an expanding collection of fossil plants from Australia as this region is an active area of research within the Paleobiology Department. The collections contain several thousand specimens from various localities mainly in eastern Australia. Highlights include:
Many Permian plants from the Sydney and Bowen basins including important three-dimensionally preserved permineralized remains from the Homevale locality in Queensland. The Australian Permian floras are dominated by Glossopteris — a distinctive tongue-shaped leaf with net-like veins.
Triassic plants, mostly from the Esk, Ipswich and Leigh Creek basins, that are dominated by the distinctively forked seed-fern leaf Dicroidium.
Late Jurassic (Tithonian) plants from the Talbragar Fossil Fish Bed in New South Wales, mainly represented by conifers. Examples are Agathis-like leaves, Allocladus and other conifers but also several genera of ‘seed-ferns’ including Komlopteris and Taeniopteris.
An Early Cretaceous flora collected from the Boola Boola locality in Victoria dominated by bennettitaleans (Otozamites) and podocarp conifers (Bellarinea)
The image at the top of the page shows a leaf impression of specimen S028118 Surangephyllum duocordata from the Permian Cooyal locality, New South Wales. Photo: Anna Lindström
Pictures from the collection:
Dicroidium odontopteroides (A) and Dicroidium elongatum (B) (S028424), late Triassic, Tivoli Formationen, Queensland, Australia. Photo: Anna Lindström
Leaf impressions of Glossopteris browniana (S048256) from late Permian sediments from Cobbora, NSW. Photo: Stephen McLoughlin
