Updated gondwana (Permian-Cretaceous) earth history of Australia

Permo-Carboniferous glaciation, confined to icecaps and mountain glaciers, was followed by Permian coal measures and Early Triassic barren measures and redbeds, in the east terminally deformed in the mid-Triassic. Coal deposition resumed during the Late Triassic, and tholeiite was erupted in the southeast. After rifting, the western margin was formed by the opening of the Indian Ocean at 156 and 132 Ma. At 140 Ma, a brief glaciation affected central Australia. By the 99 Ma mid-Cretaceous, the southern margin was finally shaped by the opening of the southeastern Indian Ocean, the shoreline retreated to the present coast from the maximum Aptian shoreline of an epeiric sea, and the Eastern highlands were uplifted to produce the present morphology of Australia. New data relate to the Permo-Carboniferous and Early Cretaceous glaciations, the Kiaman Reversed Paleomagnetic Interval, events about the Permian-Triassic boundary, including possible impact craters, advances in palynology, invertebrate paleontology, macrofloral paleontology, and paleobiogeography, the provenance of sediments by U-Pb ages and host-rock affinity of zircons, stable-isotopes and biomarkers, in petroleum systems, coal environments, calibrating the time scale with U-Pb ages of zircons, fission-track thermotectonic imaging, geothermal energy, and terranes split off the western margin. (c) 2005 International Association for Gondwana Research. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.