Publication Date:
2012-06-01
Description:
Travouillon et al. (2012) challenge our interpretation of proxy records (Herold et al., 2011), citing five points for rainforest at Riversleigh and across northern and central Australia in the early to middle Miocene; points that we refute here. (1) Cenogram/body mass distribution patterns Travouillon et al. (2009) were equivocal in assigning some fauna sites to open forest or rainforest using cenograms alone, but using cenograms and body mass distribution (BMD) in combination, they interpreted the majority of the Riversleigh sites as rainforest. Yet, their Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA) of the same faunas identified a mix of open forest (2/6) and rainforest sites (4/6) for the early Miocene, and all five middle Miocene sites as open forest. Thus their own data imply a mosaic of habitats in space and time in the Riversleigh area of northern Australia.
Print ISSN:
0091-7613
Electronic ISSN:
1943-2682
Topics:
Geosciences
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