Fossil Pollen and Spore Data from the Oakvale-1 Corehole, South Australia

Palynological analysis of the marine Oligocene-Miocene Geera Clay and Renmark Group in the Oakvale-1 corehole in the western Murray Basin, South Australia. The dataset contains diverse and well-preserved assemblages of spores, pollen, and dinoflagellates, providing fossil records for extant Australian taxa and the first Australian fossil records for some pollen types. Data is hosted by the Australian Ocean Data Network and was last updated in 2026.

Use Cases

• Reconstructing past vegetation communities based on described pollen and spore assemblages.
• Analyzing changes in plant family frequencies (e.g., Myrtaceae, Nothofagus) through the geological sequence.
• Correlating geological strata based on the identified pollen zones and the Triporopollenites bellus Zone.
• Studying the presence and absence of specific dinoflagellate cyst forms for paleoenvironmental modeling.

Strengths

• Diverse and well-preserved assemblages of spores, pollen, and dinoflagellates are described throughout the sequence.
• Provides the first fossil record in Australia for pollen of Utricularia and Gardenia.
• A quantitative zonation based on major pollen taxa frequencies has been statistically calculated, enabling division into zones and sub-zones.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data files are in HTML and PDF formats, which may require extraction for computational analysis.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Palynological analysis of core samples.

Time Range

Oligocene to Miocene geological periods.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06 23 05:10:08.100800; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Oakvale-1 corehole, western Murray Basin, South Australia.