The Integrated Plant Record (IPR) analysis: Methodological advances and new insights into the evolution of European Palaeogene/Neogene vegetation

Modern vegetation proxies reflect Palaeogene and Neogene vegetation evolution and climate change in Europe, Turkey, and Armenia

“…Fifty-four assemblages of fossil plant remains (including leaf, carpological, and pollen record) from Europe, Turkey, and Armenia and ranging from the early Eocene to Pleistocene were analysed by the IPR vegetation analysis, and then Drudges 1 and 2 (Teodoridis et al, 2020) were applied (Figure 1, Table 1, Appendix 1). Nine of the assemblages comprise leaf, carpological, and pollen records, eight include leaves and carpological material, nine leaves and pollen, one fruit and pol-len, 16 are leaf assemblages, and 11 are fruit assemblages.…”

“…The objectives of the newly introduced tools, Drudges 1 and 2 (Teodoridis et al, 2020(Teodoridis et al, , 2021, are two-fold: (1) to facilitate the application of the IPR vegetation analysis, (2) to automatically assess proxies from the reference data set of modern vegetation units. They do this based on the similarity of the proportions of the major zonal angiosperms and the coincidence of the floristic For locality numbers see Table 1.…”

“…The IPR vegetation analysis was tested on modern vegetation assemblages from China and Japan (Teodoridis et al, 2011(Teodoridis et al, , 2012. Most recently, two mathematical tools (Drudge 1 and Drudge 2) were introduced to more easily determine modern vegetation proxies (Teodoridis et al, 2020). Modern proxies are important because they facilitate our understanding of past vegetation properties.…”

“…Drudge 1 and Drudge 2 are based on the IPR vegetation analysis, which was extended for the "Taxonomic Similarity" (TS) at the genus level. Moreover, the reference dataset of modern vegetation in Teodoridis et al (2020) was considerably extended, including the vegetation from Europe and the Caucasus (Bohn et al, 2004) as well as from China (following Wang, 1961). Finally, in that paper Drudge 1 and 2 were tested on six fossil floras from Central Europe ranging from the late Eocene to the late Pliocene.…”

A new Oligocene flora from Ludvíkovice near Děčín (České středohoří Mts., the Czech Republic)

“…The newly developed "Drudge 1" tool was also applied. This enables the closest modern analogue plant assemblage to be determined from a calibration dataset (containing 505 modern plant assemblages from Europe, Caucasus, China, Mongolia and Japan) for fossil vegetation by combining IPR Similarity and Taxonomical Similarity parameters (see Teodoridis et al 2020). The Drudge 1 system indicates "Broad-leaved Evergreen Sclerophyllous Forest from Southern Hunan and Northern Guangxi" from SE China (see Wang 1961: 145, 148) as the closest modern analogue plant assemblage to the fossil plant assemblage of Ludvíkovice.…”