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.

中文翻译：

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RL Crocker 和南澳大利亚古陆平原

摘要罗伯特兰登克罗克是第一位研究沙漠沙丘的独立领域的科学家，这些沙丘现在被植被和遗迹所稳定，延伸到南澳大利亚南部的大部分地区。尽管他考虑了它们的起源，但他特别关注它们的年龄，因此，它们对气候变化的意义。由于当时没有适用于沙丘的物理测年方法，他不得不依赖地层学和风化程度等主观标准。因此，他的大部分估计都是错误的数量级，但他将注意力集中在造成地理上分离的沙丘的事件的年表上。后来的工作表明，正如克罗克推测的那样，这些领域有一个共同的年表。