
620 RECORDS OF THE S.A, MUSEUM 
the other, as a starting point for a subdivision of the Australian Pleistocene based 
on faunal changes. Even were this association clearly established, faunal studies 
do not present any very detailed or workable scheme. 
Subdivision of the period by the use of index fossils has not been successful 
principally owing to the relatively short time intervals involved. 
Students of Mollusea, for example, tend to minimize the changes obseryable 
between varions Cainozoi¢ shell faunas, and ascribe them rather to local ecological 
differences than to truc faunal breaks. This is not to say that limited correlations 
may not be possible through the use of evidence based on relatively plastie fresh. 
water forms such as Paludina. Better results seems to have been achieved by 
using snites of species, occupying specific ecological niches, as climatic and geo- 
morphie indicators. 
A key to the subdivision of the Pleistocene in Australia seems available in 
the series of apparently custatie shorelines, preserved on the virtually stable low 
level karst plateau of the South East of South Australia, his vast, horizontally 
bedded limestone region was the almost insensibly sloping floor of a Tertiary sea 
which bit deeply into the eastern part of South Australia. Old shorelines laid 
down ou this shelf and preserved in limestoue, are found as much as 40 miles 
inland from the present shore. They run in almost unbroken array between the 
present Murray River and the Glenelg TRiver, a lateral distanee of well over 
200 miles, Some of them can be traced for even greater distances along the 
southern coast of Australia, 
The enstatic nature of this series of ancicnt shorelines was only relatively 
recently recognized, by Tindale (1933), who made direet correlations with 
Pleistocene marine interglacial terraces Observed hy Cooke (1930), on the stable 
foreshore of the south-eastern coast of the United States, 
New evidence has accumulated and additional survey data on terrace heights 
has become available, The principal conclusions arrived at in 1933 now appear 
to have been endorsed by work in other paris of the world. The present author 
has been able to live in some of the classical localities for eustatic terraces on the 
south-east coast of the United States and to compare the types of evidence available 
in the two areas. his paper continues the diseussion in the light of these 
additional facts and outlines a tentative local time scale for the Pleistocene. 
SUMMARY OF RECENT WORK. 
Among the many papers published since 1935 on the subject of eustatic 
terraces, are several having a direct bearing on the present problem, 
Ward (1941) gave an E-W section of the South Hast of South Australia 
from Robe to the Hundred of Comaum. Readings of terrace heights derived 
