McCoy and Clarke : their dispute over the age of Australia's black coal

From 1847 until his death in 1899, Professor Frederick McCoy, palaeontologist in Melbourne, maintained a war of words in the scientific literature with Rev. William Clarke, geologist in Sydney, concerning the age of Australia’s black coal deposits. McCoy was convinced that the coals were all of Mesozoic age and Clarke, during the period from 1847 to his death in 1878, maintained equally vehemently that they were Palaeozoic. In fact, Clarke was correct in placing the New South Wales coals in the Palaeozoic, and McCoy’s placing of the Victorian coals in the Mesozoic was also correct. The two men were both particularly stubborn and neither would admit that they might have been arguing about coals of differing ages. Both stood unbendingly by their Northern Hemisphere, European backgrounds, and neither would change their views in the face of new evidence from the Colonies. <br />