Re: 340 million year old caves in Australia

[Tommy Tyrberg <tommy.tyrberg@norrkoping.mail.telia.com>]

At 10:13 2006-08-04, Phillip Bigelow wrote:

> If these caves had openings to the surface as early as the Paleozoic
> (that's actually a big "if"), and if the openings stayed connected to the
> surface throughout the Mesozoic, then there could be a nearly complete
> Carboniferous through Recent biostratigraphic sequence of cave fauna!
> That would be amazing.  The different avenues of study for evolution
> researchers is mind boggling.

Erosion and accumulation is very slow in parts of Australia, but not *that* 
slow. Apparently these caves formed way back in the Devonian/Carboniferous 
and have fairly recently become open to the surface again. Nothing but clay 
minerals seems to have been found yet, and personally I would be content 
with just a few palaeozoic fossils.
Caves with fossils older than the Pliocene are rather rare, but  not 
unheard of ("Phosphorites de Quercy" or the Triassic fissure fills in Wales 
for example).

Tommy Tyrberg