Historical information

This booklet contains an article on the plant fossil deposits in Eastern Victoria. It has been written by Dr John Douglas in 1963. He published extensively on a range of geological and natural history themes. His major works included co-editing the Geological Society of Victoria’s Geology of Victoria and his PH.D. thesis for the University of Melbourne contained in two Geological Survey Memoirs on the Mesozoic floras of Victoria. He was also responsible for the Geology and Sport and Recreation chapters in the State Government’s Atlas of Victoria and wrote the booklet, What Fossil Plant is That? He was a Supervising Geologist with the Department of Minerals and Energy in Victoria for many years and lectured extensively at Botany and Geology conferences in Australia and overseas.

Significance

This book is of some interest as it was written by a former resident of Warrnambool, Dr John Douglas (1997 to his death in 2007). He was an active member of the Warrnambool Field Naturalists’ Group and edited for this group the book, The Nature of Warrnambool.

Physical description

This is a small booklet of 16 pages reprinted from the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria, Vol. 77, Part 1. It has a grey cover with the logo of the Royal Society of Victoria on the front cover. It has printed material on plant fossil deposits in eastern Victoria and several sketches and black and white plates of plant fossil photographs and cross-sections. The pages were stapled but the staples have been removed. There is some rust where the staples were removed.

Inscriptions & markings

Front cover:
‘Royal Society of Victoria, New Bennettitalean Leaves from the Mesozoic of Eastern Australia by J. G. Douglas, reprinted from Proc. Roy. Soc. Victoria, Vol 77, Part 1, Issued separately, 13 December, 1963.’