Tropical palms and arums at near-polar latitudes: fossil pollen evidence from the Tamar and Macquarie Grabens, northern Tasmania

We illustrate and discuss fossil pollen evidence for two mostly tropical extant plant families in the Tamar Valley, north of Launceston, northern Tasmania, and the Macquarie Harbour Graben on the west coast of Tasmania. These are palms (Arecaceae) producing disulcate pollen (Dicolpopollis spp.) and an incompletely zonisulcate pollen (Proxapertites cf. operculatus) identified as a fossil arum (Araceae). Both fossil pollen types add to the growing body of evidence that warm to hot conditions allowed tropical monocots belonging to these two families to grow at high palaeolatitudes (c. 65° S) during the Late Paleocene and/or Early Eocene in Tasmania and even closer to the pole (c. 70° S) during the Late Cretaceous in central and southern mainland Australia.