Data supplement to: Plant proxy evidence for high rainfall and productivity in the eocene of Australia

During the early to middle Eocene, a mid-to-high latitudinal position and enhanced hydrological cycle in Australia would have contributed to a wetter and "greener" Australian continent where today arid to semi-arid climates dominate. Here, we revisit 12 Australian plant megafossil sites from the early to middle Eocene to generate temperature, precipitation and seasonality paleoclimate estimates, as well as net primary productivity (NPP) and vegetation type, based on paleobotanical proxies and compare to early Eocene global climate models. Temperature reconstructions are uniformly subtropical (mean annual, summer, and winter mean temperatures 19–21 °C, 25–27 °C and 14–16 °C, respectively). This indicates that southern Australia was ~5 °C warmer than today, despite a >20° poleward shift from its modern geographic location. Precipitation was less homogeneous than temperature, with mean annual precipitation of ~60 cm over inland sites and >100 cm over coastal sites. Precipitation may have been seasonal with the driest month receiving between 2–7× less precipitation as mean monthly precipitation. Proxy-model comparison is favorable with an 1680 ppm CO₂ concentration. However, individual proxy reconstructions can disagree with models as well as with each other. In particular, seasonality reconstructions have systemic offsets. NPP estimates were up to 1000 gC m^-2 yr^-1 higher than modern, implying a more homogenously "green" Australian continent in the early to middle Eocene and larger carbon fluxes to and from the Australian biosphere. The most similar modern vegetation type is modern-day eastern Australian subtropical forest, although distance from coast and latitude may have led to vegetation heterogeneity.