New 46000-year record of the southern margin of the Indo-Australian Summer Monsoon just dropped from deadset legend Teresa Dixon at UQ.

#AusQuaternary #Monsoon #paleoclimate

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003...

Original post on fediscience.org

Proposed cuts at #ANSTO look very likely to affect the Australian Quaternary community - worryingly via ceasing expert support for 14C dating. I wonder what proportion of Australian quaternarists have leaned on ANSTO facilities? I'm going to guess all of us!

There is still oportunity to make […]

Original post on fediscience.org

Applications for the Leanne Armand award are now open. This award funds early and mid-career researchers based in Australia to access training in micropaleonotology. Applications are due 28th September, all details can be found on the AQUA website […]

Subaqueous speleothems as archives of groundwater recharge on Australia's southern arid margin Abstract. As anthropogenic climate change enhances aridity across many regions of the globe, understanding drivers of aridification is more important than ever before. Unfortunately, arid regions globally tend to exhibit a paucity of palaeoclimate records, and the archives that are available typically comprise unconsolidated sediments prone to reworking, large dating uncertainties, and ambiguous climatic interpretations. This is certainly true of Australia's vast continental interior, which is dominated by harsh, arid conditions. Mairs Cave, in the southern Ikara-Flinders Ranges (South Australia), is located on the southern margin of the arid zone. In the present day, the cave is largely dry, and there is limited evidence of active speleothem growth. However, historical records and observations throughout the cave indicate that it was periodically flooded, suggesting the local water balance was once much more positive than it is today. The cave contains a curtain of hanging speleothems known as pendulites, which grow subaqueously when submerged in water that is saturated with respect to calcite. Geochemical evidence, including trace element concentrations, uranium isotope ratios, and dead carbon fractions (DCFs), indicates that a rise in the local groundwater during periods of enhanced groundwater recharge is the cause of the cave flooding events that trigger pendulite growth. Uranium–thorium dating of a pendulite retrieved from Mairs Cave has revealed two multi-millennial growth phases (68.5–65.4 and 51.2–42.3 ka) and two short bursts of growth (18.9 and 16.4 ka) during the Last Glacial Period (LGP). The absence of subsequent pendulite growth suggests that strong water deficits under warm Holocene interglacial conditions give rise to episodic, rather than persistent, cave flooding.

Interesting paper out recently in ClimPast - subaquous speleothems record groundwater recharge in Mairs Cave, South Australia.

https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/21/857/2025/

#AusQuaternary #speleothem

A letter in Quaternary Australasia, the bi-annual journal of the Australasian Quaternary Association. The letter is titleed "Open Letter on the Future of Geosciences in higher education" and details recent cuts at Australian and New Zealand institutions, while pointing out that this is a dumb thing to do in two countries which have quite an abundance of natural hazards. Full text exceeds the limit of the ALT text, but can be read on page 7 here: https://aqua.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/1968%20AQUA%20Quaternary%20Vol%2040%20December%202023.pdf

I missed this the first time 'round in THE last month - "Earth science is critical to national resilience – so why is it being gutted?" The AQUA executive asked ourselves a similar question a couple of years ago, leading to this open letter published in QA […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]

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Reminder that the #AusQuaternary AGM is happening this Friday! A wonderful time to renew your membership if you haven't already...

https://aqua.org.au/membership/become-an-aqua-member/

#QuaternaryScience

Another excellent edition of Quaternary Australasia is out! I always enjoy the post-conference student reports, especially when the students seem to have really gotten into the 'AQUA vibe'!

#AusQuaternary #QuaternaryScience #Palaeoclimate #paleoclimate

Wonderful to see 11 ARC Discovery Projects awarded to Quaternary projects in Australia! This must be a record for recent years/rounds.

Sleuthing thanks to Prof Simon Haberle at the ANU via the aqualist.

#AusQuaternary #EarthScience #Quaternary