Palynostratigraphy of the Bookpurnong Beds and related Late Miocene-Early Pliocene facies

Dinoflagellate cyst data from the central west Murray Basin in Australia. The dataset, published by the Australian Ocean Data Network, offers a method for distinguishing Late Miocene-Early Pliocene Bookpurnong beds from older, lithologically similar sediments. It lists species diagnostic for specific geological formations, such as Melitasphaeridium aequabile for the Bookpurnong beds and Apteodinium australiense for the older Murray Group correlatives.

Use Cases

• Correlating and dating Late Miocene-Early Pliocene sedimentary facies based on diagnostic dinoflagellate species mentioned in the description.
• Distinguishing Bookpurnong beds from older Oligocene-Middle Miocene formations like the Winnambool Formation using the listed indicator species.
• Refining stratigraphic models for the central west Murray Basin based on palynological biozones.
• Training or validating machine learning models for automated microfossil identification in geological samples.

Strengths

• Focuses on specific diagnostic species for clear stratigraphic differentiation, as detailed in the description.
• Covers a defined geological time range (Late Miocene-Early Pliocene) and geographic area (central west Murray Basin).
• Hosted by an authoritative organization, the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Likely contains taxonomic identifications and counts from geological samples.

Time Range

Late Miocene to Early Pliocene

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-28 13:36:20.477124; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Central west Murray Basin, Australia