Abstract Martin Glaessner (1906–1989) began publishing on fossil decapod crustaceans as a teenager, took doctorates in palaeontology and jurisprudence in Vienna, and developed his interest in foraminifera. Alpine tectonics was a central and lifelong theme. A second theme was economic geology. A third was organic evolution, and here it is important to note that, although the main evolutionary influence was Othenio Abel’s palaeobiology, Glaessner avoided the Germanic extremes such as typostrophism arising from transformational evolution, becoming instead a variational evolutionist, that is, a Darwinian. Foraminifera took him to Moscow to organize research pertaining to hydrocarbon exploration and development. An outstanding clutch of publications in the mid-1930s were both evolutionary-taxonomic and biostratigraphical, the latter including the most compelling of all pre-war publications on the planktonic foraminifera. In Port Moresby and Melbourne in the 1940s, amongst applied micropalaeontology, reviewing and synthesis, he produced Principles of Micropalaeontology . In the 1950s and 1960s in Adelaide he supervised research extending from Cenozoic to Cambrian and Neoproterozoic, foraminifera and crabs to trilobites and stromatolites, meanwhile making the transition himself from foraminifera to the Ediacarans. Combining meticulous attention to evidence and detail with wide-ranging enquiry, he was a forerunner of the modern disciplines and mindsets such as palaeoceanography and integreted biogeohistory.

Three time lines through the neritic stratigraphic record distributed around the northern margin of the Australo-Antarctic Gulf (AAG) mark three fundamental shifts in global environments collectively comprising the Auversian facies shift. The three lines are: (1) the beginning: the Khirthar transgression and the onset of neritic carbonate accumulation in the Bartonian Age (preceding onset of the Middle Eocene climatic optimum [MECO]); (2) the midlife change (Bartonian-Priabonian transition): the shift from carbonate-rich to carbonate-poor, higher-nutrient environments under estuarine circulation, causing widespread dysaerobia culminating in opaline silicas; and (3) the Eocene-Oligocene = Priabonian-Rupelian boundary and glaciation during oxygen isotope event Oi-1, with return of improved ventilation in neritic environments and resumption of carbonate accumulation. Meanwhile, it was warm and very wet at ~60°S. In developing a scenario for the death of the AAG, the birth of the Southern Ocean, and the transition from Paleogene greenhouse Earth to Neogene icehouse Earth, the neritic record of the northern margin is more in accord with the “Dinocyst biogeographic hypothesis” than with the “Tasman gateway hypothesis.”

Abstract The physical packaging into unconformity-bounded units of the upper Oligocene and lower Miocene neritic strata in southeastern Australia is chronologically consistent with third-order putative global sequences and glaciations. Foraminiferal biofacies data show both recurrence and progression. Species used as proxies for inner-neritic and outer-neritic environments display recurring fluctuations in close harmony with stratal packaging. In contrast to this recurrence or cycling, biofacies cluster groups are strongly sequential or “progressive” at the third-order, 10 6 -year scale, with very little overlap between the successional assemblages named Angahook, Jan Juc-1, Jan Juc-2, and Puebla. The Angahook–Jan Juc-1 and Jan Juc-2–Puebla biofacies boundaries, implying some turnover in communities, fall respectively at sequence boundaries Ru4–Ch1 and Ch4–Aq1 and glacioeustatic perturbations OCi-1 and MAi-1 (= Mi1), but the Jan Juc-1–Jan Juc-2 boundary within the Jan Juc Formation falls close to the flooding surface of sequence TB1.2. These third-order patterns of recurrence and sequential change were largely sustained at higher frequencies in the study of an interval approaching a glacial within the Jan Juc-1. Samples at the centimeter scale (about 2–4 cm spacing) over one meter of alternating soft and hard (lithified) layers yield four biofacies groups mainly on abundance variations of individual species and species groups. The clusters are cleanly separated superpositionally (thus, strongly successional), reflecting environmental cycles at 10 4 -year scale, perhaps in the Milankovitch band of 41,000 years. Shallower-water species dominate clusters B and D from hard layers, whereas deeper-water species are more abundant in clusters A and C from soft layers. The differences suggest paleodepth change of 50–70 m, with maxima in the soft layers and minima at the tops of hard layers. The high abundance of infauna and a stronger mixing between shallower-water and deeper-water species indicates an oxygen-poor environment coupled with bioturbation. Similarities between faunas of third-order and Milankovitch scales include: (i) coincidence of biofacies with lithofacies or lithostratigraphy is due largely to abundance variations of the prominent species, (ii) recurring biofacies signals of sea-level change are chronologically consistent with other published proxies of glacioeustasy, and (iii) clustered assemblages of benthic foraminifera are distinct and strongly successional.

Abstract Quantitative analysis of Oligocene assemblages in cool-water carbonates suggests a two-tiered response by benthic, neritic foraminiferal faunas to a succession of glacioeustatic fluctuations. One response appears at lower-frequency or second-order cycles and is marked by more substantial, nonreversible, taxic change at the Eocene–Oligocene boundary, at the Rupelian–Chattian (Early–Late Oligocene) boundary, and during a Late Oligocene transgressive phase. These faunal changes were responses to climatic changes forced by glaciations signaled by oceanic oxygen-isotope maxima. The second response is seen in fluctuations in the abundances of benthic neritic taxa. Rapid changes in infaunal-to-epifaunal ratios appear to chronicle reversible “short-term” local paleoenvironmental shifts forced by third-order cycles. Sequence stratigraphic packages and bounding surfaces are easier to decipher in sequences characteristic of the warmer and more sluggish Priabonian ocean than in the cooler and better-ventilated Rupelian ocean. The major (second-order) physical event at the Rupelian–Chattian boundary is recorded faunally but shows a relatively muted impact on the regional succession of neritic foraminifera compared to the sequence boundary coinciding with glaciation Oi1 in the very earliest Oligocene. We interpret, from graphic correlation and cluster analysis, that patterns of faunal change reflect endemism that developed on a broad neritic zone with wide variation in intensity of oceanic influence.

Abstract: The neritic stratigraphic record in southern Australia sorts into four cycles or sequences which resemble global second-order cycles based on sequence stratigraphy. The record is highly incomplete at the second order, due especially to a 9 my gap in the middle Eocene and poor and restricted records of the early Oligocene and the late Miocene series, and at the third order where hiatuses become more apparent as stratigraphy advances. Correlations and age determinations are based mostly on micropalaeontology and are limited by the neritic facies, the extratropical situation and the lack of a local or regional geomagnetic pattern. In this composite regional succession, we have had to proceed from regional stages based only loosely on fossils, to biostratigraphic ranges and formal zones (of planktonic foraminifera), to faunal associations based on transgressions and regressions, so that we are but a short step from a revision of the regional stages in terms of sequence biostratigraphy. This geochrono- logical scaffolding is important not only to the neritic realm itself, but to the neritic-oceanic link and ODP drilling in one direction and to the terrestrial environmental and paleobiological realm in the other. The Cenozoic record of global climatic deterioration has temporary reversals punctuated by four sharp coolings (“chills”) in the early middle Eocene, earliest Oligocene, middle Miocene and late Pliocene, and they too are chronologically consistent with the regional neritic record. In the oldest cycle, the sediments are marginal marine siliciclastics with several very brief transgressions with marine microfaunas and rare macrofossils but no limestones. Extratropical carbonates begin abruptly in the late middle Eocene series at the base of the second cycle and the Wilson Bluff transgression, which is the Khirthar Restoration of the Indo-Pacific region. At the same time there develops a distinction between warmer and cooler intermediate watermasses in the Indian Ocean, and the Leeuwin Current is born. These events are responses to accelerated Australia/Antarctica separation from 43- 42 Ma. The third-order components of this cycle are marked by marine transgressions; they are consistent in number and timing with the putative late Eocene global pattern. The third cycle is the Miocene oscillation which begins in late Oligocene time and peaks in sea level and warming at the Miocene climatic optimum in early middle Miocene time. As shown in a correlation chart, the extratropical “cool-water carbonates” are mostly in the second and third cycles, although there are carbonates in the extensive marine horizons of the Pliocene reversal. The Eocene-Miocene neritic carbonate record comprises third-order sequences, seen most clearly as marine transgressions. The transgressions can be related to third-order glaciations and eustatic cycles in plausible if not always compelling correlations. Horizons of warming, upwelling, and siliceous facies complete a framework of an outstanding extratropical, neritic carbonate record.

Abstract: The Oligocene-Miocene Port Vincent Limestone is one of several Tertiary units exposed along coastal cliffs on the western side of the St. Vincent Basin and can be traced off-shore via bore holes, where it reaches a maximum thickness of 125 m. The limestone has a cool-water bryozoan- dominated skeletal assemblage. It exhibits contrasting physical characteristics, with soft and friable, highly porous bryozoan limestone punctuated by several sharp and distinctive 0.5- to I-m-thick layers of hard calcarenite. Sedimentologically, the succession is divided into three informal members. The lower member comprises two transgressive facies, a bryozoan miliolid-echinoid packstone/rudstone and a bryozoan bivalve floatstone. The middle member is the largest and comprises five, meter-scale, hardground-bounded, asymmetric, warming-upward subtidal cycles. Wanning was brought about by an overall temperature rise in the environment (climatic changes and/or oceanic currents), acting in concert with a relative fall in sea level which brought the depositional surface into shallower and warmer near-shore illuminated environments. Marine cementation at the top of each cycle created a hard substrate, which dictated the type of fauna and flora above. The upper member comprises fine, highly abraded bryozoan- Eponides grainstone facies, which represents deposition on an outer middle ramp. Lateral and vertical facies analysis indicate that the Port Vincent Limestone was deposited in a transgressive cool-water carbonate ramp environment, extending from the inner ramp to an outer middle ramp. Cyclicity suggests that episodic warmer water interruptions brought about by fluctuating sea level (relative fall/rise) and climatic changes, occurred several times during deposition. Lithological and petrophysical variations are attributed to regional environmental changes and were later accentuated by selective diagenesis.