Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised
Pretty much the majority of the continent has undergone that process...in situ weathering and lateritisation, especially up north here. The main reason why you have the bauxite deposits at Weipa....also where you get really nice rhodochrosite  |
In 2007 the International Quaternary Association congress was held in Cairns and before and after the congress field trips to various places of (scientific mostly
) interest in Oz and NZ were run. I drove the minibus for my boss's field trip from Adelaide to Alice via (amongst other places) Coober Pedy. Apart from one South African they were all from the northern hemisphere, where the soils have mostly been stripped by glaciers and none are more than 15,000 years old. I realised my boss was being 'subversive' by bringing them to a place which was so different to anything they had seen where all their 'types' and pidgeon-holes didn't work. One young German scientist who was on some commission or other about soil classification asked my boss how he would classify the soils, to which he replied to the effect that he didn't try to classify, just explain the process of formation.