Messinian vegetation and climate of the intermontane Florina–Ptolemais–Servia Basin, NW Greece inferred from palaeobotanical data: how well do plant fossils reflect past environments?

Abstract

The late Miocene is marked by pronounced environmental changes and the appearance of strong temperature and precipitation seasonality. Although environmental heterogeneity is to be expected during this time, it is challenging to reconstruct palaeoenvironments using plant fossils. We investigated leaves and dispersed spores/pollen from 6.4 to 6 Ma strata in the intermontane Florina–Ptolemais–Servia Basin (FPS) of northwestern Greece. To assess how well plant fossils reflect the actual vegetation of the FPS, we assigned fossil taxa to biomes providing a measure for environmental heterogeneity. Additionally, the palynological assemblage was compared with pollen spectra from modern lake sediments to assess biases in spore/pollen representation in the pollen record. We found a close match of the Vegora assemblage with modern Fagus–Abies forests of Turkey. Using taxonomic affinities of leaf fossils, we further established close similarities of the Vegora assemblage with modern laurophyllous oak forests of Afghanistan. Finally, using information from sedimentary environment and taphonomy, we distinguished local and distantly growing vegetation types. We then subjected the plant assemblage of Vegora to different methods of climate reconstruction and discussed their potentials and limitations. Leaf and spore/pollen records allow accurate reconstructions of palaeoenvironments in the FPS, whereas extra-regional vegetation from coastal lowlands is probably not captured.

Niche evolution in a northern temperate tree lineage: biogeographical legacies in cork oaks (Quercus section Cerris)

“…In Western Eurasia, probable climate shifts from fully humid climates to climates with temperature and/or precipitation seasonality are inferred for the Middle Miocene (16.0–11.6 Ma) for the Cerris core group (sections Cerris and Libani ). This is in accordance with high-resolution palynological data from East Mediterranean strata, which suggest a transition from equable warm-humid temperate climates to more seasonal (precipitation) and cooler climates ( Bouchal et al , 2020 ). Shifts to fully Mediterranean climates are reconstructed with high confidence for the Pleistocene (2.58–0.012 Ma).…”

“…We used grid-weighted ‘Köppen signatures’ ( Denk et al , 2013 ; Grímsson et al , 2018 ; Bouchal et al , 2020 ), henceforth ‘Köppen profiles’, to summarize the climatic niches occupied by species of Cerris and to investigate climatic niche evolution within and among subsections of Cerris ( Table 1 ; Supplementary Data S3 ). A Köppen profile reflects the proportional coverage of the various Köppen–Geiger climate zones (cf.…”

A re-examination of the angiosperm wood record from the early and middle Miocene of Turkey, and new species descriptions

“…This shift to modern conditions happened earlier than in adjacent areas (e.g. northern Greece), where humid conditions of the early Miocene persisted into the late Miocene (Denk et al, 2018;Bouchal et al, 2020). Biltekin (2018) observed a trend from warm and humid climate to cooler and drier conditions during the Aquitanian in pollen zones dominated by Pinaceae.…”

Niche Shifts, Hybridization, Polyploidy and Geographic Parthenogenesis in Western North American Hawthorns (Crataegus subg. Sanguineae, Rosaceae)

“…In addition, the climate classification system provides a useful interpretation of the geographic distribution in terms of the cyclic, temporal aspects of local climate conveyed by standard climate diagrams. Finally, we note that use of the Köppen-Geiger Climate Classification here may facilitate integration of Crataegus fossils into estimations of paleoclimates using "Köppen signatures" linking fossil plants and their modern analogues to major global vegetation zones and their corresponding climate zones [128,129].…”