Abstract
Nothofagus is common in Southern Hemisphere temperate forests today and was even more widespread and dominant during the middle Tertiary1–7. Although a type of Nothofagus pollen, the N. brassii-type, dominated the Southern Hemisphere in the middle Tertiary, there has been no previous macrofossil record. The discrepancy between the abundant N. brassii-type pollen record and the lack of a macrofossil record is the major problem in Southern Hemisphere Tertiary vegetation reconstruction. The late Oligocene Little Rapid River flora in north-west Tasmania contains three types of Nothofagus cupules. One belongs to subsection Bipartitae, which is uniquely associated with the N. brassii-type pollen. The second type is similar to cupules of the extant Australian species N. cunninghamii and N. moorei, and the third has unknown affinities. The presence of taxonomic groups which are now separated latitudinally by about 1,500 km in Tasmanian Tertiary forests supports the hypothesis that early to middle Tertiary climatic conditions in southeastern Australia may have no modern analogue.
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