Messinian vegetation and climate of the intermontane Florina-Ptolemais-Servia Basin, NW Greece: How well do plant fossils reflect past environments?

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 6.4–6 Ma strata in
the intermontane Florina-Ptolemais-Servia Basin (FPS) of NW 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 to
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 likely not captured.