| Abstract |
Concern about the course of the current environmental problems has raised interest in investigating the different scenarios that have taken place in our planet throughout time. To that end, different methodologies have been employed in order to determine the different variables that compose the environment. In paleoecology, these variables are used for the reconstruction of paleoenvironments. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to reconstruct the environment of the early Miocene of Simojovel, Chiapas, using the taxonomic affinity of flower structures preserved in amber as a proxy. We used the method of the nearest living relative (NLR) for an estimation of the paleovegetation, which resulted in a high evergreen forest with the presence of mangrove elements and flooding zones. The paleoclimatic reconstruction was obtained using the Mutual Ecogeographic Range (MER) method, which resulted in a mean annual temperature of 24.19 ± 1.79 °C and a mean precipitation of 1745 ± 336 mm per year. These results indicate that the environmental conditions of the Miocene of Chiapas exhibited a tropical climate warmer (+1.99 °C) and drier (−337.7 mm) than the Present. Thus, the use of methods alternative to conventional ones used in plant macrofossils, together with a good proxy, such as flowers in amber as in our study, can help to infer the conditions of a fossil locality using quantitative and qualitative parameters.
|
