Continued research In late Palaeozoic palynological biostratigraphy In Australia since about 1970 permits the delineation of a series of informally defined palynostratigraphic units In both Western and eastern Australia. The units include both informal assemblage zones and taxon-range-zones. In the older, pre-glacial (and periglacial) part of the Carboniferous, two palynofloras, designated the Granulatisporite. frustulentus and the Secarisporites Microfloras are recognised. The Granulatisporites frustulentus Microflora is subdivided Into the Grandispora spiculifera Assemblage, of Tournaisian age, and the Anapiculatisporites largus Assemblage, which spans the early to late Visean Interval. The succeeding Secarisporites Microflora, the contents of which are incompletely described, is subdivided into three: the Grandispora maculosa, Anabaculites yberti, and Potonieisporites Assemblages. The Secarisporites Microflora characterises strata ranging in age from late Visean to perhaps Missourian. The preglacial palynofloras are best known from the Canning and Bonaparte Gulf Basins in Western Australia, but are known in eastern Australia from scattered localities in the Drummond Basin and the New England Block. For the later Carboniferous and Permian, palynostratigraphic schemes have developed independently in Western and eastern Australia. In Western Australia, the Canning Basin interval commencing with the glacials of the Grant Formation at the base, and extending to the top of the Liveringa Formation, has provided the stratigraphic standard for the definition of eight informal palynological assemblages, designated Units I to VIII. These span a time Interval approximately equivalent to the Missourian to late Guadalupian. In eastern Australia, the palynostratigraphic schemes currently in use represent modifications of the palynological Stages synthesised by Evans (1969). Subdivisions within these stages are based in most cases on the first appearances of individual form-species; two subdivisions have been described within both Stages 2 and 3, three within Stage 4, and four within Stage 5. Correlation of these new units with the assemblage units described from Western Australia is tentative at present. The subdivisions of Evans scheme have been identified within, inter alia, the Bowen, Cooper, Galilee, Sydney, and Tasmania Basins. Recent studies in Antarctica have compared palynological assemblages from the central Transantarctic Mountains and south Victoria Land with eastern Australian palynofloras: Stages 2, 4, and 5 have been identified from these areas. Assemblages from the Prince Charles Mountains have been referred to Stage 5.
