Quaternary Palynostratigraphy of Germany with special emphasis on the Late Pleistocene

Abstract

Here, we summarize and review the current state of knowledge on Quaternary palynostratigraphy in Germany. Our focus is especially on the Pleistocene and a comparison between northern and southern Germany, while we consider the Holocene only marginally, since many review articles already exist about this epoch. In the region under consideration several warm and cold stages were reported for the Early Pleistocene. The thermomeres are characterized by the partially frequent occurrence of relict Neogene elements. Concerning the last interglacial of the Early Pleistocene (= Osterholz Interglacial), for instance, Eucommia and Azolla filiculoides are important for stratigraphical purposes. The Middle Pleistocene encompasses the Cromerian Complex with five interglacials detected so far in northern Germany. Subsequently, the Elsterian and Saalian glacial cycles occurred intercalated by the Holsteinian interglacial. This warm stage was detected at many sites all over Germany with a characteristic vegetational development including the presence of Fagus and Pterocarya . In contrast, just a few records exist from the warm stages within the Cromerian Complex and the Saalian and their vegetational succession is poorly known. The interglacial preceding the Holocene, the Eemian Interglacial, in turn is the palynostratigraphically best defined Pleistocene warm stage. The subsequent alternation between interstadial and stadial conditions during the last glacial (i.e., Würmian or Weichselian) led to the formation and decline of boreal forests and shrub tundra, respectively. However, these vegetation changes are well understood only up to early Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3. The further course of the Middle Würmian and Weichselian vegetation development is still insufficiently reconstructed, since most pollen records provide only short time intervals and do not include the full range of stadials and interstadials found, for example, in Greenland ice cores. There are also few continuous pollen records for the Last Glacial Maximum. In contrast, the vegetation history of the Late Glacial and subsequent Holocene is again well known and in some places very precisely dated based on varve chronologies. We conclude that despite a long palynological tradition in Germany, some periods are underrepresented or hardly studied for various reasons and a correlation between north and south is often not given. The focus of future studies should therefore be on these periods and on a better correlation of pollen stratigraphy using state-of-the-art dating technologies.