Early Holocene Coral Reef Province in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia

A newly discovered coral reef province in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia, was mapped using multibeam sonar, drill cores, and underwater video. The dataset includes seven mapped reefs, with U/Th dating showing growth commenced around 10.5 thousand years ago and persisted for approximately 2.0 thousand years. The data was published by Geoscience Australia and last updated in May 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling reef growth rates (0.95 to 4 m kyr-1) against rapid sea-level rise.
• Analyzing the timing of reef colonization and submergence during the Early Holocene.
• Identifying relict reef features and correlating them with Pleistocene sea-level stillstands.
• Mapping the extent of a potential reef province with up to 50 suspected reefs.

Strengths

• Includes data from seven mapped coral reefs with confirmed living corals.
• Provides U/Th ages showing reef growth commenced around 10.5 kyr BP, making them the oldest known in Australia.
• Contains multibeam sonar mapping, drill cores, and underwater video data for multimodal analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the specific study region in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Multibeam sonar mapping, drill core sampling, and underwater video data collection.

Time Range

Early Holocene, approximately 10.5 to 8.0 thousand years before present.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 09:12:13.461481; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia.