A cool climate pollen assemblage from the type Waipipian (Middle Pliocene) of New Zealand

Abstract

Plant microfossils from c. 20 ft below the Upper Waipipi Shell beds (Middle Pliocene) indicate a climatic episode as cold as the climate of the Hautawan Stage (lowermost Lower Pleistocene).

A New Zealand climatic template back to c. 3.9 Ma: ODP Site 1119, Canterbury Bight, south‐west Pacific Ocean, and its relationship to onland successions

“…Finally, other evidence for Late Pliocene cooling in onland New Zealand successions includes (i) the presence of a block of exotic granite inferred to have been ice rafted into the Waipipian part of the Mangapaori Mudstone, at least 200 km north of the modern limit of ice rafting (Vella 1975, p. 89), and (ii) a cool climate pollen assemblage (Nothofagus fusca dominant) from sediments at the Waipipian type section in Wanganui Basin (Mildenhall & Harris 1970).…”

Zonate lycophyte spores from New Zealand Cretaceous to Paleogene strata

“…P. majus are present, and it is possible that the record of Mildenhall & Johnston is attributable to the latter species. A specimen illustrated from mid-Cretaceous strata of the Chatham Islands by Mildenhall (1994) has thickened laesurate margins similar to those of Indospora clara Bharadwaj, 1962, a Permo-Triassic species also recorded from these strata, and is here identified with that species. In southeastern Australia, the species has been recorded from the Neocomian -Aptian of the Otway and Gippsland basins by Cookson & Dettmann (1958), Rich et al (1989), and , and from various localities in strata of similar age in the Great Australian Basin by Dettmann (1963), Morgan (1980), Burger (1982Burger ( , 1988Burger ( , 1989 and Alley (1988).…”

“…In New Zealand, the species occurs in middle Albian to early Late Cretaceous terrestrial strata from the West Coast Region (Lycopodiacidites bullerensis and Trichotomosulcites subgranulatus Assemblages- Raine 1984), Fiordland (Pocknall & Lindqvist 1988), East Coast Region (Raine et al 1981, and unpublished data), Great South Basin (Raine et al 1993) and Chatham Islands (Mildenhall 1994). Biostratigraphy and isotopic dating (Waterhouse & Norris 1972, Adams & Nathan 1978, Raine 1984, Tulloch & Palmer 1990) have shown the Ohika Formation type locality to be of late Albian age, rather than Jurassic as originally thought by Couper (1953).…”

“…Later monographic works (e.g. Mildenhall 1994) have tended to pursue a nomenclature completely based on artificial genera and species with fossil types. This approach recognizes that fossil pollen and spores often cannot be so confidently identified with the extant flora when the possibilities of plant evolution and migrations are taken into account.…”

Molluscan evidence of warm sea temperatures in New Zealand during Kapitean (Late Miocene) and Waipipian (Middle Pliocene) time

“…Samples of Foram'niferida and of spores and pollen, and measurements of oxygen isotope ratios from New Zealand middle Pliocene (Waipipian) rocks have been inferred by Jenkim (1968, p. 35), Lewis & Jenkins (1969), Mildenhall & Harris (1970 and Dev'ereux et al (1970, fig. 3) to indicate very cool temperatures at this time also.…”