Cenozoic Plants and Climates of the Arctic

396 Pages·1994·21.15 MB·English

by  M. C. Boulter (auth.)

Cenozoic Plants and Climates
of the Arctic
NATO ASI Series
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Series I: Global Environmental Change, Vol. 27
Cenozoic Plants and Climates
of the Arctic
Edited by
Michael C. Boulter
Helen C. Fisher
Palaeobiology Research Unit
University of East London
Romford Road, London E15 4LZ, UK
Springer-Verlag
Berlin Heidelberg New York London Paris Tokyo
Hong Kong Barcelona Budapest
Published in cooperation with NATO Scientific Affairs Division
Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Reconstruction of
North Atlantic Climate Change Using Extinct Plant Data, held in London, UK,
November 11-16,1993
Additional material to this book can be downloaded from
http://extra.springer.com.
ISBN-13:978-3-642-79380-6 e-ISBN-13:978-3-642-79378-3
001: 10.1007/978-3-642-79378-3
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PREFACE
The twenty-six articles in this book were presented to the Arcto-Tertiary '93 NATO
Advanced Research Workshop, held at the University of East London in November 1993 and
review the topics involved up to that meeting. Each manuscript was refereed at least twice
and the authors were able to check the final version.
The last section takes the issues reviewed here into the future and lays down the main
arrangements decided at the closed sessions of the Workshop. For the first time a lot of data
are being shared from around the northern hemisphere and modern communication systems
allow that to be standardised and the quality checked. Electronic mail and the Internet are
making it possible to proceed from the regional developments (which are largely the substance
of this book) to those of the full global system.
Because the participants at the closed sessions were roughly half from NATO countries
and half from countries of the former Warsaw Pact, several ideas and methodologies were
shared at the Workshop for the first time. Such close co-operation is essential to fully
understand the complex evidence left from Arctic environments over the last 75 million years.
The problems are the more difficult because no such environments exist today and so
conventional comparisons to modern systems do not work.
The Workshop was made possible by a grant from the NATO Scientific and
Environmental Affairs Division. The Director received many thankful appreciations to that
Division especially from those from non-member States. The University of East London made
facilities available and many of its staff helped at the Workshop and in the preparation of this
volume. M.e.B. thanks the Leverhulme Trust for a Royal Society Senior Research
Fellowship from 1993-4.
London M.e. Boulter
September 1994 H.e. Fisher
TABLE OF CONTENTS
vn
Preface..........................................................................................................................
Section 1: Introduction
Towards a Review of Tertiary Palaeobotany in the Boreal Realm ........................... .
M. e. Boulter
Fossil Plants as Palaeoenvironmental Indicators...................................................... 13
W.G. Chaloner
Section 2: The Atmosphere, Tectonics and the Marine Realm
Palaeo-Ecophysiological Studies
on Cretaceous and Tertiary Fossil Floras................................................. ..... 23
D.J. Beerling
Cenozoic Tectono-Magmatic Events in the North Atlantic:
Potential Palaeo-EnvironmentaIImplications................................................ 35
O. Eldholm, AM. Myhre and J. Thiede
Cenozoic Dinoflagellate Palaeoecology Elucidated,
and Used for Marine-Terrestrial Biological Correlation................................ 57
R.N.L.B. Hubbard, M.e. Boulter and S.B. Manum
Late Eocene-Oligocene Dinoflagellate Provincialism in the North Atlantic Ocean... 73
S.P. Damassa and G.L.Williams
Dinoflagellate Cysts and Climate Change Through the Neogene.... ......................... 93
R. Harland
Section 3: Comparisons with other Evidence
Comparison of Palaeo Data Based on Plant and Foraminiferal Evidence
from the Cenozoic of Northeast Asia (Koryak Hills, Kamchatka)................ 107
L.I. Fot'janova and M.Y. Serova
Tertiary Climate Changes in the Far East Based on Palaeofloristic and
Palaeomagnetic Data.................................................................................. 115
V.A Krassilov
Section 4: Palaeobotanical Evidence
A Review of Late Cretaceous Floras and Climates of Arctic Russia....................... 127
AB. Herman
Late Cretaceous Artic Platanoids and High Latitude Climate................................. 151
AB. Herman
Circum-Arctic Plant Fossils and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Transition...................... 161
R.A Spicer, K.S. Davies and A.B. Herman
VIII
Early Tertiary Vegetation of Arctic Canada
and Its Relevance to Paleoclimatic Interpretation............ ........... ...... ............. 175
IF. Basinger, D.R. Greenwood and T. Sweda
Two Conifers -Tetraclinis Mast. (Cupressaceae) and Metasequoia Miki
(Taxodiaceae) - Relicts or Palaeoclimatic Indicators of the Past................. 199
D.H.Mai
The Palaeogene Flora of Spitsbergen:
Implications for Arcto-Tertiary Climatostratigraphy.................................... 215
S.B. Manum
Alaskan Palaeogene Climates as Inferred from the Clamp Database....................... 223
lA. Wolfe
Invasion of Arcto-Tertiary Elements in the Paleogene of Central Europe.. ............. 239
H. Walther
Connecting Links Between the Arctic Paleocene and European Tertiary Floras..... 251
Z. Kvacek
An Estimate of the Early Tertiary Paleoclimate of the Southern Arctic.................. 267
B.H. Tiffney
The Fossil of the Paleogene Climatic Optimun in North Eastern Asia..................... 297
L.Yu. Budantsev
Some Early Paleocene Species from western Kamchatka....................................... 315
O.D. Lavrenko and L.I. Fot~anova
Migrations and Evolution: Computerised Maps from Computerised Data..... .... ...... 327
S.M. Brown
Floristic Changes in the Areas Surrounding the Paratethys During Neogene Time. 347
1 Kovar-Eder et a/.
Some Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene Pollen Profiles from Poland.................. 371
L. Stuchlik
Section 5: A Challenge and the Future
Arcto-Tertiary '93: Perspectives and Prospects..................................................... 383
M.E. Collinson
Plans for Further International Cooperation............................................................ 389
Subject Index. .............. ,................................................................................................ 399
TOWARDS A REVIEW OF TERTIARY PALAEOBOTANY IN THE BOREAL
REALM
M.C. Boulter
Palaeobiology Research Unit
University of East London
Romford Road, London E15 4LZ, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT
This introduction reviews the background and objectives of the November 1993 London
NATO Advanced Research Workshop. It was to highlight fossil plant and other data from
Cenozoic sediments in the Arctic to help understand global climate change. Within different
traditions, groups of fossil plant taxa have been recognised to reveal patterns of plant
migration and evolution. More international planning to use our data is urged to a broader
scientific audience and challenges are offered about concepts that assume that some groups of
plants were static. We are finding new ways of making interpretations of climate change from
accountable data.
INTRODUCTION
Several distinct theories have been proposed to describe the changes in floras of the
northern hemisphere during the Tertiary Period. They originated from thinkers in North
America, Russia and Europe. This Workshop elaborated on these theories in some detail,
exchanged information and interpretation about the background knowledge, and planned
further work to test new ideas about Tertiary vegetation and especially about its use in
understanding climate change.
Mostly, these interpretations involve us thinking about groups of taxa - a way of
reconstructing ancient environments that may be rather misleading. This Advanced Research
Workshop gave a chance to go back to such first principles and reconstruct the development
of vegetation patterns with modern methods and ideas.
The North American concepts of Boreal Tertiary floras have been reviewed by Wolfe
(1977) who gives a strong criticism of the concepts related to Engler's (1882) Arcto-Tertiary
Elements (page 327 of that publication is translated below). These had been rigorously
supported by Chaney and others and instead Wolfe supports MacGinitie and Mason. He goes
on to argue that a Mixed Mesophytic Forest already recognised by Chinese botanists (Wang,
1961) has been important during the Tertiary. He proposes that sets of data from North
American Palaeogene localities have consistent representation in the Arctic rocks.
The Russian view of Tertiary plant migration, recently reviewed by Budhantsev (1992),
contrasts directly with the North American model. Budhantsev recognises two types of Arctic
NATO ASI Series, Vol. 127
Cenozoic Plants and Climates of the Arctic
Edited by M. C. Boulter and H. C. Fisher
© Springer· Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1994
2
floras, the Pacific and the Atlantic. Both are thought to have originated in the Cretaceous and
to have persisted until the Palaeogene, with changes only at the margins in south and western
Siberia and western Canada. The Atlantic floras are defined by Budhantsev as being
'thermophilic' and he lists the genera on his page 19. The Pacific floras comprise 'temperate'
types which are thought to have originated on the ancient Angaro-Beringian landmass. Maps
reconstructing the migration and evolution of these temperate floras through the Tertiary of
Asia are also offered (Budhantsev, 1992). Kryshtofovich (1955) described the Turgai Flora
which is centred in Kajhakstan and penetrated to Europe after the closing of the Turgai Strait.
He also refers to Engler's Palaeotropical Flora as the one of Po Ita va. Akhmet'iev (1983) and
Zhilin (1989) make comments about these and put them in a modem context.
A model for Central Europe was proposed by Krutzsch (1967) on the basis of pollen,
and by Mai (1970; 1987; 1991) who studied other plant parts. It comprises Mastixioid Floras
of laurophyllic, or evergreen, vegetation otherwise known as palaeotropical elements, and the
deciduous Arcto-Tertiary element. They showed fluctuations in the occurrence of these two
groups and used them to distinguish temperature changes throughout the European Tertiary.
However, these curves differ from the fluctuations detennined from other data and may reflect
facies characters in the terrestrial deposits, although Krutzsch's (1991) revised curve fits other
evidence much better. Boulter (1984) has discussed these conflicts and has found it difficult
to resolve the different views. This Workshop began to set that right.
EARLY THEORIES AND mEIR LIMITATIONS
Mai (1991) has reviewed most of the groups of Tertiary plants that have been named.
Crudely they can be categorised in the following three groups:
Northern Boreal vegetation
- Areto Tertiary Geoflora (see Mai, 1991)
- Brito-Arctic Igneous Province (Boulter and Manum, 1989)
- Greenland Province (Kryshtofovich, 1955)
- Turgai: central Asia and Europe (Krystofovich, 1955)
Borderland Boreal vegetation
- Mixed Mesophytic Forest: E Asia (mostly evergreen) and N America (Wolfe, 1976)
- Temperate plants and palms (Krystofovich, 1955)
Southern Boreal vegetation
- Mastixioid Group (see Mai, 1991: Europe fruits and seeds)
- Palaeotropical Flora of Eurasia (Engler, 1879)
- Laurophyll vegetation (see Mai, 1991)
- Gelinden Province (Kryshtofovich, 1955)
- Poltavian Flora of Eurasia (Kryshtofovich, 1955)
- British Tertiary Flora (Chandler, 1964)
- Thermophilic elements (see Mai, 1991)
3
What is clear from these diverse and isolated schools of thought is that facts are
uncertain and dispersed and their interpretation is controversial. There does seem to have
been a distinct set of plant taxa growing on the land around the Arctic Ocean during the
Tertiary. This was different to the warmer floras around Tethys, the southern USA and Asia.
But their identity, how they shifted in relation to one another and to changing environments,
and how they evolved, remains unclear. By making existing knowledge more compatible and
more accessible and by rethinking some of the basic issues we may quite quickly be able to see
clearer patterns of migration and evolution which should have significance to understanding
climate change in the Arctic.
The distinctive polar environmental factors of day length, angle of incidence of sunlight,
land masses and bridges, and changing meteorology etc., must have enabled distinct groups of
plants to develop, settle and begin to differentiate and adapt. There was a reaction to climate
change by these palaeoarctic plants, particularly at the Eocene temperature maximum, the
Eocene/Oligocene cooling, and the onset of Pleistocene fluctuations during the Neogene.
There has been another major factor influencing these developments in knowledge of the
Arctic Tertiary vegetation. It concerns the ways in which we date sediments and other rocks.
Many of the Arctic localities which have been so important in elucidating the Arcto-Tertiary
story had been thought to be Neogene in age. Heer's Greenland fossils and Nathorst's flora
from Spitsbergen were thought to be Miocene and many assumed that the Mull flora was that
age too. Modern methods of radiometric apd micropalaeontological dating reveal many more
Palaeogene (even Palaeocene) deposits in the Arctic as had been anticipated by Gardner
(1883-6).
TOWARDS A NEW METHODOLOGY
These different outlooks on Arcto-Tertiary palaeobotany are largely due to isolated
groups of palaeontologists with their own teachers, cultures and philosophical attitudes to
scientific issues. They have worked more or less separately since research on the fossils began,
because ofthe limited international communications between the national and political groups.
That period is at an end, and, coincident with the installation of new Information Technology
systems, new cooperation between all groups in Arctic palaeobotany was celebrated by this
NATO Advanced Research Workshop. The breakdown of barriers to communication and
methodological philosophy is a major catastrophic event (an intellectual equivalent of the
Cretaceous/Tertiary bolide) for science and mankind. There may be the potential within these
circumstances for us to develop new ideas that Kuhn, the well known philosopher of science
active in the 1960's, might still call revolutionary (Hoyningen-Huene, 1993).
According to his ideas great advances in understanding are made when isolated schools
of thought are brought together. So, with us now, the sudden contact between two or three
groups with different histories and philosophies may trigger some important new
breakthroughs. Rudwick (1988) has written about a comparable scientific revolution as the
'Great Devonian Controversy' in the early nineteenth century. As here, there were ingrained
beliefs based on dubious interpretations of Baconian facts (comparable to our views of the
rigid lists of Arcto-Tertiary Geoflora taxa), institutional loyalties (Geological Surveys and
ancient Universities), and competing traditions (gentlemen of the church in Darwin's day). So
this is a time for us all to look at the present compartmentalised states of knowledge with