Late Cenozoic plant extinctions in Australia

Late Cenozoic plant record for Australia is extremely patchy. Data indicate a general change in the continent's vegetation from complex rainforest to structurally more simple communities with a reduction in species diversity. Traditional ideas of a direct replacement of rainforest by eucalypt vegetation are challenged in light of recent fossil evidence. Complex rainforest was probably first replaced by a variety of open sclerophyll and drier rainforest communities in response to increasing aridity and climatic variability. Vegetation was probably not a critical factor in causing mammalian extinctions. -after Author