Data from: A comparative study of ancient sedimentary DNA, pollen and macrofossils from permafrost sediments of northern Siberia reveals long-term vegetational stability

Although ancient DNA from sediments (sedaDNA) has been used to investigate
past ecosystems, the approach has never been directly compared to the
traditional methods of pollen and macrofossil analysis. We conducted a
comparative survey of 18 ancient permafrost samples spanning the Late
Pleistocene (46–12.5 thousand years ago), from the Taymyr Peninsula in
northern Siberia. The results show that pollen, macrofossils and sedaDNA
are complementary rather than overlapping, and in combination reveal more
detailed information on plant palaeocommunities than can be achieved by
each individual approach. SedaDNA and macrofossils share greater overlap
in plant identifications than with pollen, suggesting that sedaDNA is
local in origin. These two proxies also permit identification to lower
taxonomic levels than pollen, enabling investigation of temporal changes
in species composition and the determination of indicator species to
describe environmental changes. Combining data from all three proxies,
reveals an area continually dominated by a mosaic vegetation of
tundra-steppe, pioneer and wet-indicator plants. Such vegetational
stability is unexpected, given the severe climate changes taking place in
the northern hemisphere during this time, with changes in average annual
temperatures of > 22ºC. This may explain the abundance of ice-age
mammals such as horse and bison in Taymyr Peninsula during the
Pleistocene, and why it acted as a refugium for the last mainland woolly
mammoth. Our finding reveals the benefits of combining sedaDNA, pollen and
macrofossil for palaeovegetational reconstruction and add to the
increasing evidence suggesting large areas of the northern hemisphere
remained ecologically stable during the Late Pleistocene.