History of the Australian Vegetation: Cretaceous to Recent Book

The Australian vegetation is the end result of a remarkable history of climate change, latitudinal change, continental isolation, soil evolution, interaction with an evolving fauna, fire, and most recently, human impact. This book presents a detailed synopsis of the critical events that led to the evolution of the unique Australian flora and the wide variety of vegetation types contained within it. The first part of the book covers the past continental relationships of Australia, its palaeoclimate, fauna, and the evolution of its landforms since the rise to dominance of the angiosperms at the beginning of the Cretaceous period. A detailed summary of the palaeobotanical record is then presented, which uses the palynological record to give an overview of the vegetation and the distribution of important taxa within it and the macrofossil record is used to trace the evolution of critical taxa.