U–Pb dating of zircons from middle Permian tuffs in the Canning Basin of Western Australia reveals an apparent age conflict with established spore-pollen zonation. The dataset includes an age of 267.04 ± 0.14 Ma from the Microbaculispora villosa Zone, which is 1.7 million years younger than tuffs from the Dulhuntyispora granulata Zone. The data was published in the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences in 2017 and is hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network.
Use Cases
- Calibrating Permian spore-pollen biozones based on U-Pb zircon ages.
- Investigating facies-dependent biases in palynological assemblages.
- Re-evaluating the Roadian–Wordian stage boundary in the Canning Basin.
- Comparing geochronological data from non-marine versus marginal-marine depositional environments.
Strengths
- Includes high-precision CA-IDTIMS U-Pb zircon ages with reported uncertainties (e.g., 267.04 ± 0.14 Ma).
- Explicitly compares data from two distinct geographic locations (350–400 km apart) and depositional facies.
- Provides a specific, peer-reviewed case study on a 1.7 million-year apparent conflict in established zonation.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
Provenance
- Source
- Australian Ocean Data Network (via data.gov.au), citing Mory et al. (2017).
- Collection Method
- Chemical abrasion-isotope dilution thermal ionisation mass spectrometry (CA-IDTIMS) on zircon from tuff beds, combined with palynological analysis.
- Time Range
- Middle Permian (Roadian–Wordian stages), approximately 267 million years ago.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-06-05 06:32:58.993785; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- Canning Basin, Western Australia, specifically the Pittston SD-1 drillhole and core holes 350–400 km to the northeast.