A snapshot of mid Eocene landscapes in the southern Central Andes: Spore-pollen records from the Casa Grande Formation (Jujuy, Argentina).

ABSTRACT: The southern Central Andes-or Puna-now contains specialized plant communities adapted to life in extreme environments. During the middle Eocene (~40 Ma), the Cordillera at these latitudes was barely uplifted and global climates were much warmer than today. No fossil plant remains have been discovered so far from this age in the Puna region to attest to past scenarios. Yet, we assume that the vegetation cover must have been very different from what it looks today. To test this hypothesis, we study a spore-pollen record from the mid Eocene Casa Grande Formation (Jujuy, northwestern Argentina). Although sampling is preliminary, we found ~70 morphotypes of spores, pollen grains and other palynomorphs, many of which were produced by taxa with tropical or subtropical modern distributions (e.g.,

SUBMITTER: Tapia MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10075436 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature