Palinologia di una cava nell’alta pianura modenese in relazione a vicende ambientali coeve alla sedimentazione, e agli apporti pollinici secondari da formazioni plioceniche

Palynological researches in high plain quarry near Formigine (Modena-Italy); floristic-climatic features and presence of allochtonous Pliocene pollen assemblages

Abstract

Palynological researches were carried in a quarry for tiles in S. Antonio near Formigine; the clayey layer, almost 10 meters high, covers a gravel bank. The most represented arboreous plants are Pinus and Abies that, about -6 m cross their diagram curves, so the second becomes predominant over the first. Picea keeps itself on very low values, meanwhile Quercetum mixtum constantly presents itself on a little higher but always modest percentages. The vegetation appears like that of a rather arid high plain, at the top surrounded by a light oak-wood. It permits the filtering of the pollen rain from the overhanging mountain belt to the high plain. The cross-over of the Pinus and Abies curves in the Apennines is dated by CHIARUGI about 6000 B. c. that is to say at the beginning of Boreal. The first pic of the Abies and the beginning of the second one in the quarry-diagram seems also to include the Atlantic period. Probably in this period the dry and hot climate has helped the pedogenesis testified by a paleosoil more important than the other of the profile. Some events as the beginning of the Fagus, the presence of Alnus, and so on, near the top of the diagram seem to belong to the Subboreal. We tried to value the secondary transfer of « ancient » pollens from higher Pliocene sediments. Prehistoric findings in quarries somewhere near seem to confirm the supposed dating, on the other hand, other problems seem not to find correspondence in paleontological and geomorphological researches before carried. We cannot accept the presence of sea-sediments, that in near are more depth, in S. Antonio quarry. The presence of a soil dated M-R on the gravel bank here is also doubtful.