Robert Morley

Palynova UK

This Pollen and Spore Atlas for the Cenozoic of Malaysia presents for the first time detailed descriptions with full nomenclatural details of 186 pollen, spore and algal form-taxa that are important in the evaluation of the palynostratigraphy and environment interpretation in the Oligocene to Pliocene succession of the Malay Basin. The Atlas will a...

作为自晚始新世以来劳亚大陆和冈瓦纳大陆之间植物扩散的交汇点，缅甸中部盆地出土了丰富多样的化石花粉。本研究报道了来自缅甸中部盆地上始新统Yaw 组无患子科（Sapindaceae）植物的一种花粉化石新属和新种——格林氏粉属（Grimipollis）和缅甸格林氏粉（Grimmipollis burmanica）。利用层次聚类分析和花粉图谱揭示其花粉纹饰与其他 类似属的相似性和古生态。Grimmipollis 的花粉粒具有副合孔（parasyncolporate）的孔口，两侧有顶孔区（apocolpial field），孔沟边缘（margines）明显，副合孔的孔沟沿线有弧形、结节状和绳状的中孔脊（mesocolpial ridges），以及显著的疣状或槽状顶孔区（apocolpia）。这些特征将...

Tropical forests occupy small coral atolls to the vast Amazon basin. They occur across bioregions with different geological and climatic history. Differences in area and bioregional history shape species immigration, extinction and diversification. How this effects local diversity is unclear. The Indonesian archipelago hosts thousands of tree speci...

Tropical forests occupy small coral atolls to the vast Amazon basin. They occur across bioregions with different geological and climatic history. Differences in area and bioregional history shape species immigration, extinction and diversification. How this effects local diversity is unclear. The Indonesian archipelago hosts thousands of tree speci...

Old-world rainforests of the Palaeotropical Kingdom became established at different times in different regions with changing opportunities for plant dispersals in relation to Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic plate movements and climate change. The Palaeotropical and Neotropical kingdoms differentiated in the Late Cretaceous. Maastrichtian records of fo...

Well to well correlations of the Cuu Long Basin are typically challenging, due to the highly variable nature of the wireline signature and resolution of the seismic data. Traditionally the Cuu Long Basin is subdivided based on Seismic Groups; Seismic Group G, which rests on crystalline basement, Seismic Groups F and E which represents the main exte...

Obtaining confident age interpretations using a traditional biostratigraphic approach fail in many of the Southeast Asian continental margin and lacustrine successions since most of the microfossil extinction datums are diachronous, or index fossils may be missing. This is due to a combination of facies and carbonate dissolution issues. In marine-i...

As a crossroads for plant dispersal between Laurasia and Gondwana since at least the late Eocene, the Central Myanmar Basins have yielded rich and diverse fossil pollen . Here we report Grimmipollis burmanica, a new genus and species in the soapberry family (Sapindaceae) from the upper Eocene Yaw Formation in the Central Myanmar Basins. We also inv...

The Burma Terrane has yielded some of the earliest pieces of evidence for monsoonal rainfall in the Bay of Bengal. However, Burmese ecosystems and their potential monsoonal imprint remain poorly studied. This study focuses on the late Eocene Yaw Formation (23° N) in central Myanmar, which was located near the equator (c. 5° N) during the Eocene. We...

Some of the earliest pieces of evidence for monsoonal activity in the Bengal Bay come from the middle and Upper Eocene sedimentary series of Myanmar. Recent paleogeographic reconstructions have yet relocated Myanmar close to the equator during the Eocene, which questions the relevance of Burmese material to study past South Asian monsoonal activity...

The study of palynology performed on the Oligocene marine sediment of the East Java Sea provides excellent recovery which allows the construction of palynological succession which applies regionally (Lelono et. al., 2011). In fact, this succession is characterized by assemblages that suggest climatic changes. These assemblages are divided into two...

Systematic biostratigraphic analyses have been undertaken on the Oligocene clastic and carbonate Kujung Formation from the East Java Sea, North of Madura. The succession has been examined mainly using cutting samples in two wells, using a combination of foraminiferal, nannofossil and palynological analyses at regular spacing. Nannofossil analysis i...

In the Miocene, a large wetland system extended from the Andean foothills into western Amazonia. This system has no modern analogue and the driving mechanisms are not yet fully understood. Dynamic topography and Andean uplift are thought to have controlled deposition, with allocyclic base level changes driven by eustasy and orbital forcing also pla...

The evolution and diversification of ancient megathermal angiosperm lineages with Africa-India origins in Asian tropical forests is poorly understood because of the lack of reliable fossils. Our palaeobiogeographical analysis of pollen fossils from Africa and India combined with molecular data and fossil amber records suggest a tropical-African ori...

Reference: Lim, J.Y., Huang, H., Farnsworth, A., Lunt, D.J., Baker, W.J., Morley, R.J., Kissling, W.D. & Hoorn, C. (2022) The Cenozoic history of palms: Global diversification, biogeography, and the decline of megathermal forests. Contact: Jun Ying Lim (junyinglim@gmail.com), Huasheng Huang (buxushuang@gmail.com)

Aim Megathermal rain forests and mangroves are much smaller in extent today than in the early Cenozoic, primarily owing to global cooling and drying trends since the Eocene–Oligocene transition (c. 34 Ma). The general reduction of these biomes is hypothesized to shape the diversity and biogeographical history of tropical plant clades. However, thi...

Palm and palm-like (PPL) taxa have been widely reported at low-mid latitudes in Paleogene pollen assemblages. Yet their occurrence in the Paleogene of Myanmar remains poorly documented. Here we investigate the morphology of PPL pollen along a middle to upper Eocene sedimentary sequence in the Central Myanmar Basin and discuss their nearest living r...

This paper reviews climate and vegetation history for tropical Asia for the last three million years prior to the Holocene, comparing the history for India and Southeast Asia for the later Pliocene, and Pleistocene, paying emphasis to the last glacial maximum. The Pliocene witnessed the demise of humid tropical forests across India, which were repl...

A micrograph (a swamp fern spore 𝙂𝙚𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙤𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙨 𝙜𝙚𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙤𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙨 with affinity to 𝘾𝙮𝙘𝙡𝙤𝙥𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙪𝙨) in our paper ("𝗔𝘁 𝗮 𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗱𝘀: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗘𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗻𝗲 𝗳𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗮 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝘆𝗮𝗻𝗺𝗮𝗿 𝗼𝘄𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲", Huang et al. (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.revpalbo.2021.104441) was selected as the cover image on the cover of volume 2...

Medieval Arab traders, bartering for forest products with indigenous tribes along the unending coastlines of the Malesian archipelago were first to recognise the value of the magnificent dipterocarps, for their camphor-bearing resin which they introduced to the Middle east and therefrom to Europe. Knowledge grew, and then value in international tra...

Myanmar was shaped by the India–Asia collision, fusion of the Burma Terrane (BT) with Asia, and mountain building. Throughout this process new elevational gradients and habitats were formed, which affected the regional climate, but also forged new dispersal routes into Asia and India. In spite of its importance, the vegetation history of Myanmar is...

The geology of Myanmar was shaped by the India-Asia collision, fusion of the Burma Terrane (BT) with Asia, and mountain building. Throughout this process new elevational gradients and habitats were formed, which affected the regional climate and biodiversity, but also forged new dispersal routes into Asia and India. In spite of its importance, the...

Aim Forest composition and distribution are determined by a myriad of factors, including climate. As models of tropical rain forest, palms are often used as indicator taxa, particularly the Mauritiinae. We question, what characterizes the Mauritiinae pollen in the global fossil record? And when did the Mauritiinae become endemic to South America?...

Supporting Information 1 (Figs. S1-S8 & Appendices S1-S2) for Bogotá-Ángel et al. (2021)

Supporting Information 2 (Tables S1-S5) for Bogotá-Ángel et al. (2021)

The Cenozoic sedimentary succession of the Song Hong Basin, offshore North Vietnam is poor in marine microfossils, especially in the early Miocene and Oligocene and subsequently is poorly dated. However, it is rich in terrestrially derived pollen, spores, and freshwater algae. Biostratigraphic assemblages from two wells, termed Well A and B, have b...

A 2 m thick bed of smectite‐rich clay within a sequence of distal deep water turbidites and marine mudstones of the Temburong Formation on the island of Labuan, Sabah, North West Borneo, is an altered, re‐sedimented pyroclastic tuff which is geochemically of rhyolite‐dacite composition. The tuff bed was deposited in deep water, although probably <1...

This paper reviews quantitative biostratigraphic data from 101 petroleum exploration wells from the Malay, Sarawak and Sabah basins, and places the stratigraphy of each area into a precise chronostratigraphic framework comprising 41 transgressive-regressive depositional packages which are fully defined here. Each package is ‘fingerprinted’ by foram...

In the Palaeogene, pollen assemblages at low and mid latitudes are characterized by abundant palm and palm-like (PPL) taxa. Although these taxa have been widely reported, their occurrence in the Palaeogene of Myanmar remains poorly documented. Here we report on the morphology of PPL pollen along a middle to upper Eocene sedimentary sequence in cent...

This is a Webinar prepared for FOSI IAGI in Indonesia, covering the following topics: 1 What is palynology? 2 Naming and describing fossil pollen 3 Modern pollen rain and pollen transport 4 Pollen sums and data presentation 5 Late Quaternary studies Late Quaternary climate history and impact of man on vegetation Peat swamps Coastal ecosystems Mari...

Aim To determine the vegetation and landscape experienced by Homo erectus populations which first inhabited Java. Location Perning, near Mojokerto, East Java, the 1936 discovery locality of a fossil child's skull widely attributed to H. erectus , and laterally equivalent sediments at Jetis. Taxon Terrestrial, mangrove and aquatic plants. Methods...

Unraveling the origins of Malesia's once vast, hyperdiverse rainforests is a perennial challenge. Major contributions to rainforest assembly came from floristic elements carried on the Indian Plate and montane elements from the Australian Plate (Sahul). The Sahul component is now understood to include substantial two-way exchanges with Sunda inclus...

Fossil palm pollen referred to genera such as Longapertites, Spinizonocolpites, Palmaepollenites, and Dicolpopollis, and the palm-like Proxapertites had a very widespread distribution during the Paleogene. Here we investigate the fossil palm pollen within the composition of the latest middle to earliest late Eocene Yaw Formation in the Kalewa regio...

The chronostratigraphy of the Cuu Long Basin, offshore Vietnam to the south of the Mekong Delta, is poorly understood, especially for the Palaeogene succession. This paper utilises a comprehensive biostratigraphic database from 46 exploration wells to establish a high-resolution sequence biostratigraphic framework for the Oligocene and upper Eocene...

The paper identifies repeated, climate-driven depositional cycles through the Oligocene and Eocene, that can be tied to 406 ka 'heartbeat of the Oligocene' eccentricity cycles, allowing the age of each cycle, and of multiple unconformities, to be accurately determined in a Southeast Asian basin for the first time. The extent of uncomformities throu...

The Cenozoic vegetation history of Central Myanmar is only sparsely documented and yet of great interest in the context of regional paleogeographic and climatic changes. The Kalewa section, situated in the Central Myanmar Basin and recently dated by our group (Myanmar Paleoclimate and Geodynamics research group), presents an excellent opportunity t...

Cenozoic sediments from tropical Southeast Asia often contain common pollen of Laurasian conifers and temperate deciduous angiosperms. Their occurrence can be explained by derivation from nearby uplands and thus provide an additional tool to the geologist for the determination of palaeoaltitudes (Morley 2000, 2018). Palynological analyses have now...

The main phases of plant dispersal into, and out of the South-East Asian region are discussed in relation to plate tectonics and changing climates. The South-East Asian area was a backwater of angiosperm evolution until the collision of the Indian Plate with Asia during the early Cenozoic. The Late Cretaceous remains poorly understood, but the Pale...

The Cenozoic history of uplift and denudation of mountain regions across Southeast Asia and Eastern Indonesia is complex, paralleling the complex nature of the geological history of the region. Mountain ranges form as a result of plate collisions and rifting. The Eocene collision of India with Asia resulted in formation of mountain ranges in Indoch...

Sequence biostratigraphy allows high resolution mapping of the Neogene across the Southeast Asian region. The evaluation of VIM* depositional cycles from around 200 well sections across SE Asia, from the Gulf of Thailand to the Makassar Straits, allows sedimentation rates to be calculated and compared in approximately 0.4 Ma time slices across the...

The palaeogeography of the Sunda region has been subject to dramatic change during the Cenozoic. These changes have been driven by tectonic events and by fluctuations in sea level and climate. After the Mesozoic assembly of the broad area from microplates derived from Gondwana, widespread rifting took place across the region following the initial c...

The Phu Khanh Basin of eastern Vietnam is one of the last remaining basins in South East Asia that is truly frontier. To date, no relevant wells have been drilled in the basin and only sparse 2D seismic and a few small 3D surveys offer any constraints on the interpretation of the potential hydrocarbon systems in this very large, offshore basin. Mur...

Biotic interchange after the connection of previously independently evolving floras and faunas is thought to be one of the key factors that shaped global biodiversity as we see it today. However, it was not known how biotic interchange develops over longer time periods of several million years following the secondary contact of different biotas. He...

Supplementary Figures 1-4, Supplementary Table 1, Supplementary Notes 1 and Supplementary References

An evaluation of regional Neogene sedimentation rates across the Sunda region, together with improved regional palaeoenvironment mapping, has permitted comparison of the major delta and fan depositional systems across the region. This has enabled a reassessment of the palaeogeography of the area through the positioning of the main river systems and...

The Meratus Complex, located in SE Kalimantan, records accretion and collision along the Sundaland margin during the mid-Cretaceous. Several authors have suggested that the resultant suture continues northwards beneath the Kutai Basin, possibly extending as far north as Sabah, where ophiolitic and arc-type rocks are well documented. Prominent featu...

The Cenozoic sedimentary successions of the interconnected basins which stretch from the Gulf of Thailand to Nam Con Son and the successions of Sarawak and Sabah present major problems with respect to the determination of age and environments of deposition due to the sporadic occurrence of marine index microfossils, seemingly anomalous assemblages...

Borneo’s geologic and paleontological history remains poorly understood because of the lack of outcrops and difficulties with dating. Urban development around the city of Samarinda has produced over four kilometers of well-exposed stratigraphy depicting the progradation of the ancient Mahakam river delta across the Samarinda area, which includes sl...

Thailand's offshore Tertiary basins have yielded nearly five BBOE. Exploration initiated in the 1970s and peaked by mid 1990s. Volumetrically the discoveries are dominantly gas (∼80%). Some important discoveries within the northern Pattani Basin have significant oil reserves e.g. Jasmine 60 MMBO. Basins offshore Thailand consist of Eocene-Oligocene...

Tropical Southeast Asia harbors extraordinary species richness and in its entirety comprises four of the Earth's 34 biodiversity hotspots. Here, we examine the assembly of the Southeast Asian biota through time and space. We conduct meta-analyses of geological, climatic and biological (including 61 phylogenetic) datasets to test which areas have be...

The Barito and Asem-Asem Basins occupy the southeastern corner of Borneo, and are separated by the Meratus Mountains – an accretionary collision complex that records the suturing of East Java-West Sulawesi to Sundaland in the mid-Cretaceous. The basins contain comparable sedimentary successions of Middle Eocene to Pleistocene age, that suggest they...

The Barito and Asem-Asem Basins occupy the southeastern corner of Borneo, and are separated by the Meratus Mountains – an accretionary collision complex that records the suturing of East Java-West Sulawesi to Sundaland in the mid-Cretaceous. The basins contain comparable sedimentary successions of Middle Eocene to Pleistocene age, that suggest they...

Overview of Cenozoic biostratigraphy and biofacies interpretation of SE Asia. Principal microfossil groups used in region are foraminifera, calcareous nannofossils and palynology. Also brief reviews of work done on ostracodes, diatoms and radiolaria.

Tropical peat swamps are more widespread in Sundaland than in any other equatorial region. Also, Cenozoic deposits from the area are rich in coals. The developmental pattern of present day peat swamps from the region has often been used to help clarify that of coals in the geological record. This paper initially reviews the ecology of present day o...

Sunda region was the scene of widespread rifting during the mid-Cenozoic, resulting in the development of numerous large lake-filled rifts, analogous in scale to the rift valley system of East Africa. The Tonle Sap in Cambodia forms the closest modern analogue for these lakes in the Southeast Asian region. Many of the palaeolakes were long lived, c...

This publication combines the interpretations of two major sets of data. One is the geophysical data that is used to interpret the position of the tectonic plates through geologic time. The other is based on a long-time search of the geological literature to find, record and evaluate the lithologic descriptions of countless reports around the globe...

The structure and stratigraphy for many of the rift basins in the Gulf of Thailand and southern Vietnam shelf are individually well understood. However, the understanding of the region as a whole, and the relationships from one basin to another, is less clear. Regional paleogeography maps help portray the structural and stratigraphic evolution of t...

The Barito Basin in southeast Kalimantan contains a thick, and well exposed Cenozoic sedimentary succession. The Tanjung Formation represents the oldest part of the succession, and was deposited in a largely terrestrial setting followed by a transgression to shallow marine deposition. The formation is well exposed along the eastern margin of the ba...

The flora and fauna of Southeast Asia are exceptionally diverse. The region includes several terrestrial biodiversity hotspots and is the principal global hotspot for marine diversity, but it also faces the most intense challenges of the current global biodiversity crisis. Providing reviews, syntheses and results of the latest research into Southea...

The marked biogeographic difference between western (Malay Peninsula and Sumatra) and eastern (Borneo) Sundaland is surprising given the long time that these areas have formed a single landmass. A dispersal barrier in the form of a dry savanna corridor during glacial maxima has been proposed to explain this disparity. However, the short duration of...

The history of megathermal (currently ‘‘tropical’’) rainforests over the last 30 kyr is now becoming relatively well-understood, as demonstrated by the many contributions in this volume. However, our perception of their longer-term history remains highly fragmentary. There is a real need for a better understanding of rainforest history on an evolut...

The Neogene climate history of the Makassar Straits has been assessed by combining palynological studies of two Late Quaternary cores from the ocean floor with analyses of petroleum exploration wells from the Makassar Straits, Indonesia, penetrating the Early Pleistocene to Middle Miocene. The two Late Quaternary cores span 30 ka, located offshore...

Rich palynomorph assemblages have been obtained through a marine Oligocene succession from the East Java Sea (Indonesia) and provide the first instance of an independently dated Oligocene succession from SE Asia that has yielded a good quality palynological record. The succession has been independently dated by nannofossils and foraminifera. The pa...

In a recent analysis of the historical biogeography of Melastomataceae, Renner, Clausing, and Meyer (2001; American Journal of Botany 88(7): 1290???1300) rejected the hypothesis of a Gondwana origin. Using a fossil-calibrated chloroplast DNA (ndhF) phylogeny, they placed the early diversification of Melastomataceae in Laurasia at the Paleocene/Eoce...