Paleoenvironmental investigation of Caladenia Cave fossil mammals: consolidating Holocene climate change patterns in southwestern Australia

Quaternary paleoenvironmental research on the Swan Coastal Plain of Western Australia has focused primarily around Perth and the extreme southwest, with very little work conducted to the north between 29° and 32° S. Marine invertebrates in the Swan River, calcrete deposits along the coast, previously worked vertebrate cave assemblages and fossil pollen floras pulled from swamps on Rottnest Island and in the extreme southwest provide evidence for an increase in rainfall during the mid to late Holocene, but are chronologically inconsistent. Many of these records used multiple sites and concluded with one chosen site and date as evidence of regional climate change. Other dates such as those for Rottnest Island are highly specific to a single location, an island environment being climatically isolated from the mainland, but assumed to represent greater coastal southwestern Australia. Many of these investigations also use various incompatible dating methods across marine and terrestrial environments where the dates have not yet been calibrated.