A late Pleistocene and Holocene pollen diagram from Lynch's Crater, north-eastern Queensland, Australia

The pollen diagram from Lynch's Crater extends the climatic and vegetation record for the Atherton Tableland back to about 60,000 years B.P. Subtropical rain forest, with abundant Araucaria, was present around the site from before 60,000 B.P. to about 38,000 B.P. and existed under about half the present‐day annual rainfall. This was replaced by sclerophyll vegetation between 38,000 and 27,000 B.P. as a result of a decrease in precipitation, a decrease in temperature or the activities of aboriginal man. In any case the agent of rain forest destruction was probably fire. The record for the last 10,000 years or so is probably incomplete and radiocarbon dates unreliable, but changes during this period are in broad agreement with those evidenced from previously described sites within the area. The sequence from Lynch's Crater provides a basis for the interpretation of many problematical features of present‐day vegetation distributions.