The term Anthropocene, proposed and increasingly employed to denote the current interval of anthropogenic global environmental change, may be discussed on stratigraphic grounds. A case can be made for its consideration as a formal epoch in that, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, Earth has endured changes sufficient to leave a global stratigraphic signature distinct from that of the Holocene or of previous Pleistocene interglacial phases, encompassing novel biotic, sedimentary, and geochemical change. These changes, although likely only in their initial phases, are sufficiently distinct and robustly established for suggestions of a Holocene-Anthropocene boundary in the recent historical past to be geologically reasonable. The boundary may be defined either via Global Stratigraphic Section and Point ("golden spike") locations or by adopting a numerical date. Formal adoption of this term in the near future will largely depend on its utility, particularly to earth scientists working on late Holocene successions. This datum, from the perspective of the far future, will most probably approximate a distinctive stratigraphic boundary.

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the northern Hemisphere dominates our knowledge of Mesozoic and cenozoic fossilized tree resin (amber) with few findings from the high southern paleolatitudes of Southern Pangea and Southern Gondwana. Here we report new Pangean and Gondwana amber occurrences dating from ~230 to 40 Ma from Australia (Late triassic and paleogene of tasmania; Late cretaceous Gippsland Basin in Victoria; Paleocene and late middle Eocene of Victoria) and New Zealand (Late Cretaceous Chatham Islands). The Paleogene, richly fossiliferous deposits contain significant and diverse inclusions of arthropods, plants and fungi. These austral discoveries open six new windows to different but crucial intervals of the Mesozoic and early cenozoic, providing the earliest occurrence(s) of some taxa in the modern fauna and flora giving new insights into the ecology and evolution of polar and subpolar terrestrial ecosystems. Amber, or ancient tree resin, is valued most highly in science as an exceptional preservation medium for small organisms as fossil bioinclusions. In paleontology, diverse animals, plants and microorganisms have the potential of being preserved in three dimensions in the finest of detail. Worldwide, ambers have been recorded dominantly in upper Mesozoic to lower Cenozoic rocks from Northern Hemisphere and Northern Gondwana localities, but only one southern high latitude occurrence of microorganisms and microbe-like inclusions in amber has been published from the early Late Cretaceous (Turonian) in the Flaxman and Waarre formations of southern Victoria, Australia 1. Other Late Cretaceous ambers have recently been reported from the Chatham Islands, New Zealand 2 , representing internal plant resin canals (no exuded amber), and small to minute amber fragments have been reported from the early Paleogene (early Eocene) of western Tasmania 3 , mid-Paleogene of Victoria 4 and strandline deposits of the southern coast of Australia from Victoria to the west coast 5 (Fig. 1). However, no preserved animals or plants have yet been found. Neogene ambers have been reported from the Mio-Pliocene Australian Latrobe Valley Coal, cropping out near Yallourn, Allendale and also Lal Lal in Victoria in Australia 6,7 (Fig. 1). Earlier reports of Cretaceous amber sourced from the Wonthaggi Coal Mine 7 have proved to be anomalous and not from the Mesozoic or early Cenozoic 1. Amber from Cape York, far northern Queensland, Australia, is under study to establish if it is autochthonous or allochthonous (see discussion in Supplementary Text). New

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New Caledonia was, until recently, considered an old continental island harbouring a rich biota with outstanding Gondwanan relicts. However, deep marine sedimentation and tectonic evidence suggest complete submergence of the island during the latest Cretaceous to the Paleocene. Molecular phylogenies provide evidence for some deeply-diverging clades that may predate the Eocene and abundant post-Oligocene colonisation events. Extinction and colonization biases, as well as survival of some groups in refuges on neighbouring paleo-islands, may have obscured biogeographic trends over long time scales. Fossil data are therefore crucial for understanding the history of the New Caledonian biota, but occurrences are sparse and have received only limited attention. Here we describe five exceptional fossil assemblages that provide important new insights into New Caledonia’s terrestrial paleobiota from three key time intervals: prior to the submersion of the island, following re-emergence, and prior to Pleistocene climatic shifts. These will be of major importance for elucidating changes in New Caledonia’s floristic composition over time.

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