16 THE PROBLEM OF ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AUSTRALIA 
Penck and Brickner (1909) from purely geological evidence 
worked out a time scale for Pleistocene stages in the Alps, and 
their estimates agree in a general way fairly well with the figures 
given above. Their quantitative graph (Fig. 2) is reproduced from 
Daly (1934). 
AUSTRALIAN Post-TERTIARY GEOLOGY 
Towards the end of the Tertiary period, Australia and Tasmania 
underwent a tectonic uplift which ushered in the present cycle 
of erosion. The old Murray Gulf, until then occupied by the 
sea, was drained; and the Darling, the Murrumbidgee and the 
Murray, which had previously entered the sea by separate mouths, 
were engrafted to form a single river system. At a later stage a 
flat-domed anticline arose across the lower course of the stream; 
through this the river has cut a gorge 200 ft. deep in places, 
and for 150 miles between Loxton and Murray Bridge, South 
Australia, it flows through this canyon (Howchin, 1929). In early 
Pleistocene times the climate became colder and culminated in 
successive glacial phases, evidence of which can be seen in Tas- 
mania, at Mount Kosciusko, New South Wales, and in the Owen 
Stanley Range, New Guinea. Below the snow line the country 
was well watered during the glacial and possibly the interglacial 
phases, but then desiccation began and the modern arid climatic 
cycle in Central Australia was inaugurated. Successive eustatice 
alternations of high and low sea level gave rise to raised beaches 
and drowned strandlines. Hodge Smith and Iredale (1924), from 
geological and biological evidence, concluded that an old shore-line 
extends along the 70 fathom (420 ft.) submarine contour from 
Broken Bay, New South Wales, to south-eastern Tasmania. Other 
strandlines at about 200 ft. and 70 ft. below sea level have been 
recorded (Cotton, 1926). Similar drowned valleys have been 
observed in Tasmania (Lewis, 1934, Edwards, 1941). The highest 
known raised beach, 380 ft. above present sea level, at Ooldea in 
South Australia, contains fossils which Chapman (1920) regarded 
as Lower Pleistocene. In the south-east of South Australia a 
series of dunes, generally consolidated and roughly parallel to 
the coast, and remains of successive elevated coast lines extend 
as far as Narracoorte, about 60 miles inland (Tenison Woods, 1862, 
Howchin, 1918, C. Fenner, 1931, Tindale, 1933, Crocker, 1941). 
The Narracoorte ‘‘Range”’ follows along a fault searp which has 
been revealed by marine denudation in some places and is masked 
by dunes in others. If the raised strandlines correspond with 
interglacial high sea levels, and the consolidated dunes were 
formed during glacial epochs, this district may furnish a key to 
