Amino acid racemization reactions have been extensively applied to a range of sample materials of Quaternary age from various parts of the Northern Hemisphere since the early 1970s. This paper details studies of Australian Quaternary marginal marine sequences which have provided a framework to assess critically results from Europe and North America and determine the age resolution, upper and lower age limits of amino acid dating, and to comment further on the nature of molluscan racemization kinetics and the geochronometric utility of different amino acids.