R.L. Crocker and the South Australian palaeodunefields

ABSTRACT Robert Langdon Crocker was the first scientist to investigate the separate fields of desert dunes that, now stabilised by vegetation and relic, extend over much of southern South Australia. Though he considered their origin, he was particularly concerned with their age or ages, and hence their significance for climatic change. As no physical dating methods appropriate to dune sand were then available, he perforce relied on stratigraphy and subjective criteria such as degree of weathering. Consequently, most of his estimates were of the wrong order of magnitude, but he focused attention on the chronology of events responsible for the geographically separate dunefields. Later work has shown that, as Crocker surmised, the fields share a common chronology. So much so that it is proposed that they could justifiably be named after he who first recognised their common characteristics and raised the questions of when they formed, when they were stabilised, and thus when climate had changed.