Evolution & Palaeobiology of the Australian Flora
Southern Australia is the best place in the world to study the effects of long-term climate change on vegetation.
This is because Australia has moved through approximately 20 degrees of latitude since it separated from Antarctica about 35 million years ago, and during that time this movement has had a profound impact on the global and, more specifically, Australian climate. The study of the effect of this climate change on the vegetation is made possible by the excellent preservation of Cainozoic plant fossils in central and south-eastern Australia.
This has been coupled with physiological research on the nearest living relatives of the fossils so that a reconstruction of the reasons behind plant evolution and/or distributional change can be attempted. This program utilises the fossil record and the living relatives of the fossils to document the impacts of lowering temperatures and reduced water availability on the vegetation of a large region.
Such data are vital to our understanding of the potential impact of future, much shorter term, climate change.