Browsing by Subject "Paleobotany"

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    Greening a lost world: paleoartistic investigations of the early Pleistocene vegetation landscape in the first Europeans' homeland.
    (Elsevier, 2024-03-25) Amorós, Ariadna; Ochando, Juan; Munuera, Manuel; Marín-Arroyo, Ana Belén; Jiménez-Arenas, Juan Manuel; Sánchez Giner, María Victoria; Amorós Seller, Gabriela; Carrión García, José Sebastián; Bellas Artes
    The scarcity of pictorial reconstructions focusing on Quaternary flora and vegetation prompts a reevaluation of traditional zoocentrism in future paleoartistic research. Here we present paleoartistic renderings depicting vegetation landscapes around the Orce Archaeological Zone (OAZ), encompassing sites dating from 1.6 to 1.2 million years ago during the Early Pleistocene of the Guadix-Baza Basin in southern Spain. Four pieces are based on fossil pollen data from Venta Micena 1 (VM1), Barranco León (BL), and Fuente Nueva 3 (FN3). The artwork considers altitudinal belt distribution, taxonomic and structural diversity, extinct taxa in the Iberian Peninsula post-Early Pleistocene, and those previously extinct at higher latitudes in Europe. This essay visually represents the coexistence of mesophytic, thermophytic, and xerophytic plant communities within a glacial refugium of woody species. Lastly, employing a non-conventional iconographic approach, we portray a female Homo individual in the forest refugium to draw up on possible adaptive traits of these early Europeans.
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    Open Access
    Welcome to the forest theatre: unveiling a Balkan refugium through paleoart.
    (Elsevier, 2024-07-18) Ochando, Juan; Magri, Donatella; Marín-Arroyo, Ana B.; Amorós, Ariadna; Munuera, Manuel; Di Rita, Federico; Michelangeli, Fabrizio; Roksandic, Mirjana; Mihailovíc, Dusan; Sánchez Giner, María Victoria; Amorós Seller, Gabriela; Carrión García, José Sebastián; Bellas Artes
    This paper presents an artistic paleolandscape experiment based primarily on recent palynological data from the Paleolithic site of Peˇsturina, in the Central Balkans of Serbia. These data are integrated into the general knowledge of flora and vegetation changes in the Balkans and southern Carpathians obtained through other paleobotanical sequences, especially pollen records from lake sediments. The paleoartistic proposal includes several drawing attempts at different geographic scales with an emphasis on plant taxa and their position within glacial refugia. The contrast with the interglacial situation is also illustrated, but the work especially focuses on the concept of long-term refugia and the altitudinal shifts of steppes, conifers, and broad-leaf trees. An ecological and biogeographical discussion accompanies the illustrations, highlighting the insurmountable ethodological limitations and the challenges that pose obstacles to the progress of palynology as a technique for paleoenvironmental reconstruction at the spatial scale. The structure of the paper aims to serve as a guiding example for the teaching and scientific dissemination of paleosciences, from a conservationist perspective that is much needed in the current scenario of global change and biodiversity crisis.