Mawson’s archival specimens from the birthplaces of petroleum exploration in Australia and North America: their historical and modern significance

Abstract

Sir Douglas Mawson, the eminent geologist-mineralogist and Antarctic explorer, was a professor and prominent researcher from 1921 to 1957 at the University of Adelaide where he began teaching in 1906. His little-known interest in the origins of crude oil is evident in two of his archived items with direct links to the birth places of petroleum exploration in the USA and Australia. The first, a sample of crude oil from Edwin Drake’s historic discovery well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, is unique for several reasons. Its saturated and aromatic hydrocarbon signatures, hitherto unreported, reveal it to be of sub-oxic marine origin and expelled from its source rock late in the conventional oil-generation window. Produced from the Upper Devonian Riceville Shale, it is the world’s first unconventional crude oil discovery. The second item is one of Mawson’s several specimens of coorongite recovered from Alfred Flat, South Australia, near the site of Australia’s first exploration well. It is a black rubbery material originally regarded as a product of local oil seepage. Later shown to be the desiccated remains of the freshwater alga Botryococcus braunii, its molecular signatures differ markedly from those of the three modern races of this alga. Coorongite is currently of interest as an intermediate in the production of biofuel.