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[email protected] The Open Ecology Journal, 2012, 5, 53-83 53 Open Access American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land (1948): Its Long-Range Impact Raymond Louis Specht* Botanist, Ecologist, Ethno-botanist, American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia Abstract: The American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia was sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institution in the United States and the Commonwealth Government of Australia. During 1948, two anthropologists, an archaeologist, four biological scientists and three health and nutrition experts, with two photographers and three support staff, spent eight months studying the ecology of this infertile, monsoonal landscape to learn how the present-day Aborigines who had arrived between 3500 and 5000 years ago - displacing the first hunter-gatherers, the Mimi, who arrived some 53,000 to 60,000 years before - were able to survive throughout the year. The Gondwanan origins of the heathy flora of the sandstones, the grassy eucalypt forests and woodlands on the lateritic earths, the monsoonal rainforests, the wetland and coastal plant communities -with vegetation structures similar to those in southern Australia - inspired long-term research on the physico-chemical processes (aerodynamic, water relations and mineral nutrition) that determine the structure, growth and biodiversity of plant formations throughout Australia. The