Late Palaeozoic glaciation of Australia

Abstract

Late Palaeozoic glaciation in Australia, discovered over a century ago, is now known to have covered a large part of the continent. In South Australia, tillite and outwash debris lie upon clearly striated pavements within glacial valleys, and show that ice sheets with valley tongues moved northward from sources now occupied by deep ocean south of the continent. These glaciers reached into the Cooper, Arckaringa, and Pedirka Basins at the end of the Carboniferous and laid down patches of till in the Early Permian, now preserved largely in the subsurface. In Tasmania, an ice sheet waxed in the latest Carboniferous from sources to the west of the island, and deposited till and “drop‐stones” into fossiliferous marine strata until well into the Late Permian. In Victoria, the ice cap laid down till on a striated floor, and here and there sequences of outwash, including boulder pavements. In New South Wales, continental glaciation expanded eastward to the sea early in the Permian, and left a record intercalated with volcanics and coal beds into the Late Permian. Bordering the Tamworth Trough of northern New South Wales, and occurring also in the highlands of New England, alpine glaciers left a record in the form of striated stones and dropstones, in very thick sequences of fluviatile, lacustrine, and marine clastic sediments. The mountains existed in Middle and early Late Carboniferous times, and were largely worn down to gentle relief when continental glaciers expanded northward in the Early Permian. A non‐glacial interval at the end of the Carboniferous therefore probably occurred in New South Wales. In Queensland, alpine glaciers occupied mountains at the western rim of the Bowen Basin at the end of the Carboniferous. Large blocks carried by icebergs from glaciers of unknown locations were dropped into Lower and Upper Permian strata of the Bowen Basin as well. In Western Australia Early Permian ice centres were located on the Yilgarn Block, east of the Perth Basin, on the Pilbara Block southwest of the Canning Basin, and on the Kimberley Block. Evidence for this glaciation consists mostly of ice‐rafted debris and fluvial‐glacial and glacial‐marine strata that reached as far north as the Bonaparte Gulf Basin. The rapid growth northward of continental glaciers in Australia near the end of the Carboniferous corresponds with a rapid shift of palaeolatitude as judged from Irving's palaeomagnetic studies. The ice sheet grew quickly upon upland areas when Gondwanaland moved to a near polar position and the unfrozen Palaeo‐Pacific lay near at hand to provide an abundant source of moisture.