Late cainozoic environments of part of Northeastern South Australia∗

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Abstract
In the Lake Frome area of South Australia there is a sedimentary sequence of non‐marine (or possibly distant marginal marine) pale‐green to grey, fine elastics and carbonates (Namba Formation). The base of these deposits is Medial Miocene in age and they are overlain unconformably by Pleistocene (and ? Pliocene) sediments. The Miocene sequence is equivalent to the Etadunna Formation of the Lake Eyre Basin, and the clay mineralogy is similar. Combining evidence from mineralogy, palynology, and vertebrate palaeontology, a warm high‐rainfall climate operating on a subdued topography is indicated for the lower part of the Miocene Lake Frome sequence. This caused the illite‐chlorite‐kaolinite suite of the largely Precambrian provenance to be transformed to smectite and randomly‐interstratified clay. A palygorskite‐dolomite assemblage accumulated in alkaline lakes of extreme marginal marine situation during periods of seasonal dry intervals superposed on the previous climate. A change to illite‐dominated clay, stratigraphically about halfway up the sequence, occurred simultaneously with initial uplift of the Flinders Ranges. These ranges were previously represented by, at the most, a region of low hills. Uplift, without intervention of climatic change, is sufficient to alter the clay mineralogy by promoting increased leaching. Higher in the sequence, and correlated with the major phase of uplift in the Flinders Ranges, smectite re‐appears. In this case the clay suite is believed to have resulted from increased aridity. The smectite‐rich sediments accumulated above the water table in extensive fan and mud‐flow deposits. The Neogene sequence records a major palaeogeographic change from low energy rivers, swamps, and lakes in a low relief terrain, probably connected to the sea, to a landscape approaching that of the present during Miocene‐Pliocene times. When the Pleistocene Millyera Formation accumulated, the landscape resembled the present, though the ancestral Lake Frome was larger, and rainfall higher.