Geoscience Australia Data provides planktic and benthic foraminiferal data from dredge samples on the Marion Plateau, offshore Queensland. The dataset covers two distinct sites with samples ranging from the Early Miocene to the Pleistocene, documenting platform development and subsidence. It was last updated on 2026-05-14.
Use Cases
- Reconstructing paleoenvironments based on the presence of shallow-water faunal components like Halimeda and hermatypic corals.
- Dating geological events and hiatuses based on the biostratigraphic ages of cavity-fill sediments and borings.
- Analyzing platform subsidence history based on the transition from shallow-water to planktic foraminiferal assemblages.
- Correlating stratigraphic sequences between the northern and southern sites based on described foraminiferal zones.
Strengths
- Covers a long temporal range from the Early Miocene to the Pleistocene.
- Provides comparative data from two distinct geographic sites on the Marion Plateau.
- Includes multiple fossil groups (planktic foraminiferids, larger benthic foraminiferids, Halimeda, corals) for environmental interpretation.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Data is presented in PDF and HTML formats, which may require extraction for quantitative analysis.
Provenance
- Source
- Geoscience Australia Data
- Collection Method
- Studied in thin section from a suite of dredge samples.
- Time Range
- Miocene to Pleistocene
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-05-14 04:24:46.257318; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- Marion Plateau, offshore Queensland, Australia