single page item on stratigraphy issues relevant to Australian geologists. This column discusses international discussions on the global stratotype section and point (GSSP) concept, new developments in stratigrphic classification and upcoming opportunities to showcase Australian examples in 2012. Journal ISSN 0312 4711

The Australian Stratigraphic Units Database (ASUD) is the lexicon of Australian stratigraphy, maintained by Geoscience Australia on behalf of the Australian Stratigraphy Commission (ASC). Initiated in 1949 as the Australian Central Register of Stratigraphic Names, the ASUD became a digital database in 1979, and is now accessible through the Geoscience Australia website (http://www.ga.gov.au/products-services/data-applications/reference-databases/stratigraphic-units.html) with search capabilities on attributes such as name, rank, age, state, and geological province. The ASC includes representatives from all Australian states and territories (generally government geologists) who work together to maintain the consistency, accuracy and currency of information in the database. This includes resolving stratigraphic differences across political borders and between researchers to maintain it as a truly authoritative national resource. The database is continually updated with information collated from all publications that describe Australian stratigraphic units, including journal articles and Geological Survey maps and publications. Where possible, data quality within the ASUD is enforced by codelists (eg, rank, lithology, age, age determination method, relationship types). Information includes unit definitions, currency, rank, location, age, lithologies, composition, and environment of formation. It also includes relationships with other units (eg, overlying, intruding, correlated units), hierarchy (constituent and parent units), previous names, related geological provinces (eg, basin, craton), and links to all publications that reference a stratigraphic unit. The ASUD is a central cog in Australia's national digital geological datasets. It is the repository of all unit descriptions in the national digital geological map datasets, and is linked to the national mineral deposits, geological provinces, and geological samples databases.

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A review and compilation of open file micropalaeontology and palynology data from offshore wells on the continental margin of Tasmania. The bulk of data was supplied by Alan Partridge, with the remainder from WCR's.

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The western margin of Australia comprises a number of frontier sedimentary basins that are largely under-explored and relatively poorly understood. As part of the Federal Government's Offshore Energy Security Program, Geoscience Australia undertook seismic and marine reconnaissance surveys across the region in late 2008-early 2009. Targeted dredge and video-grab sampling in the canyons incising the continental slope successfully recovered sedimentary rocks from the North Perth Basin, Cuvier Margin and Wallaby Plateau, thus providing significant new insights into the geological history and palaeogeography of the region. The Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous was a period of major tectonism along this margin as Jurassic rifting was followed by the final break-up of Greater India from Australia in the Valanginian. Subsequent thermal subsidence and continental margin flexure led to the deposition of Cretaceous to Recent sediments. The successful recovery of a rich palyniferous succession of Early Cretaceous siliciclastics represents the first biostratigraphic data for much of the region, as vast tracks of this margin have no borehole data and are true 'frontier' regions. The new palynological data shows a clear progression from pre-rift (Berriasian) terrestrial deposition through syn-rift to early post-rift (Valanginian-early Hauterivian) restricted marine sequences and finally a succession of inner to outer shelfal environments in the late post-rift phase (mid Hauterivian-early Albian). Abstract continues (does not fit within this field)

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