Journal article
Continental aridification and the vanishing of Australia's megalakes
TJ Cohen, GC Nanson, JD Jansen, BG Jones, Z Jacobs, P Treble, DM Price, JH May, AM Smith, LK Ayliffe, JC Hellstrom
Geology | Published : 2011
DOI: 10.1130/G31518.1
Abstract
The nature of the Australian climate at about the time of rapid megafaunal extinctions and humans arriving in Australia is poorly understood and is an important element in the contentious debate as to whether humans or climate caused the extinctions. Here we present a new paleoshoreline chronology that extends over the past 100 k.y. for Lake Mega-Frome, the coalescence of Lakes Frome, Blanche, Callabonna and Gregory, in the southern latitudes of central Australia. We show that Lake Mega-Frome was connected for the last time to adjacent Lake Eyre at 50-47 ka, forming the largest remaining interconnected system of paleolakes on the Australian continent. The final disconnection and a progressiv..
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Awarded by Natural Environment Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
This research was undertaken by Cohen, Nanson, and Jones as part of Australian Research Council Discovery funding (DP0667182). We thank John McEntee, and Gerard and Karina Sheehan from Moolawatana homestead for access and Anders Hallan (freshwater mollusks). Rod Wells assisted in the collection of the Mairs Cave stalagmites and staff at the Kelly Hill Conservation Park and the National Parks and Wildlife of South Australia enabled the collection of KHSCS2, assisted by K. C. Moriarty. We also thank M. T. McCulloch for access to the clean labs and thermal ionization mass spectrometer facility at the Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University. Adam Williams, Andrew Jenkinson, and Vladimir Levchenko (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) assisted in accelerator mass spectrometry sample preparation and analysis.