Palaeoartistic reconstructions of Last Interglacial landscapes in the European temperate forest biome, consistent with our pollen-based estimates of vegetation structure. Credit: Brennan Stokkermans

Phys.org has a story about ancient Europe.  A recent paper in the journal Science Advances looked at pollen samples from various sites across Europe to determine the distribution of plants during the last inter-glacial period about 116,000 to 129,000 years ago.  The researchers from Europe and Canada found that Europe was a temperate forest intermixed with open grasslands.  This time interval is before the arrival of modern humans about 40,000 years ago, but Neanderthals were present in Europe at the time.

Such arguments have been bolstered by tree pollen samples found at multiple sites across Europe dating from the time under study. But such studies, the researchers claim, are skewed by the fact that trees produce far more pollen than other types of vegetation, such as grasses.

For this new study, the research team studied pollen samples collected over many years at dig sites by research teams all across Europe. As part of that analysis, they used the REVEAL reconstruction method, a computer model that has been developed over many years to account for environmental factors, such as pollen amounts from different species of plants, to make estimations of the number of plants in a given area at a given time.