A complete pollen record of the last 230 ka from Lynch's Crater, north-eastern Australia

Abstract Recent drilling eventually reached to the base of the sediments of Lynch's Crater on the Atherton Tableland within the humid tropics of north-eastern Australia. This paper incorporates results from the sequence extension into a complete record from the site, much of which has only been presented previously in summary form. A more certain chronology for the record is provided by recent radiocarbon dating on the topmost sediments and the application of time series analysis to the whole sequence. This suggests that the vegetation and climate are forced essentially by northern hemisphere insolation and ice volume, probably operating through sea level and sea surface temperature changes. The extended record is considered to cover the last 230,000 years and the pattern of complex rainforest expansion during wetter interglacial periods and its replacement by drier rainforest and sclerophyll vegetation during drier glacials is maintained. Superimposed on this cyclicity are trends resulting from both the evolution of the lake basin as well as external influences that include climate and, within the last 45,000 years, people.

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