Fossil spores and pollen used to date units in the School Creek Landslide, Taroona
A 25–30 ha area of the grounds under the Taroona Primary and High schools is moving slowly towards the River Derwent and causing subsidence of the adjacent Channel Highway upslope.
A new study focuses on recently-sampled drill core from the School Creek landslide archived in MRT’s Core Library at Mornington, Hobart. The cores lack material suitable for isotopic age control and ages in the study are based on fossil spores and pollen (miospores) preserved in rare intervals of carbonaceous clays and lignite preserved within otherwise highly weathered sands, gravels and clays in two boreholes drilled on the upper edge of the School Creek landslide.