Contributions of Quaternary botany to modern ecology and biogeography

Quaternary (last 2.6 million years) botany involves studying plant megafossils (e.g. tree stumps), macrofossils (e.g. seeds, leaves), and microfossils (e.g. pollen, spores) preserved in peat bogs and lake sediments. Although megafossils and macrofossils have been studied since the late eighteenth century, Quaternary botany today is largely dominated by pollen analysis.Quaternary pollen analysis is just over 100 years old. It started primarily as...