La flora del Neogene dell’Italia peninsulare e della Sicilia. The Neogene flora of the Italian peninsula

A comparative analysis of micro (pollen)- and macropalaeobotanical (leaves, fruits and seeds) data from selected Italian sites has been carried out in order to obtain an accurate interpretation of the palaeofloristic, vegetational and climatic setting for the Neogene. Ancient plant communities, as reconstructed by means of this integrated approach, show the dominance of warm temperate forest taxa, with the highest floristic affinity to the forests of Central China. “Cool temperate” taxa are scarcely represented in pollen records, with the exception of some intervals characterized by the increase in Picea and Cedrus. The overall scantiness of herbs indicates the absence of dry conditions and no open vegetation expansion. All the analytic methods applied to such palaeofloral records indicate that precipitation was sufficiently high for the persistence of a “broad-leaved evergreen/warm temperate mixed forest” from 6.0 to 3.5 Ma. For the evaporitic Messinian (ca. 5.9 to 5.6 Ma), climatic reconstructions obtained by physiognomic analysis of leaf assemblages are in agreement with those based on pollen data according to the “Climatic Amplitude Method”, and indicate moist warm-temperate conditions. Accordingly, we suggest that the Adriatic-Padane basin would have been under dominant moist conditions, even during the deposition of evaporites. Slightly drier phases in post-evaporitic Messinian are suggested by the ecological preferences of some peculiar macrofossil taxa, which are, however, still associated to several arboreal plants, definitely indicating that forested environments persisted. Fluctuations in humidity are also attested by contemporary pollen records. The Neogene flora of Sicily is also described with special focus on Messinian and Zanclean.