An outline of Late Cenozoic palaeoclimatic events in the Cape Range region

WA Museum Records and Supplements | Updated 9 years ago

Abstract -The paper provides a tentative outline of the Late Cenozoic climate history of the Cape Range region. Given the sparsity of information specific to the region, a model of palaeoclimatic events is developed based on a wider understanding of the nature and controls of palaeoclimatic events in northern Australia. From the available evidence, it seems that the wetter conditions which prevailed in this area during much of the Tertiary were replaced in the closing stages of the Tertiary by a drier climate regime. The recent climate regime of the region is likely to have been in existence since the Middle Pleistocene. The general Middle - Late Quaternary climate regimes are likely to have oscillated between long, dry glacial stages, lasting for some 100 000 years, and shorter, wet interglacial stages, which lasted for some 10 000 years. There are suggestions that some Pleistocene interglacials were wetter than the Holocene but this is difficult to demonstrate.