Quaternary pollen record from laguna de tagua tagua, chile.

Pollen of southern beech and podocarp at Laguna de Tagua Tagua during the late Pleistocene indicates that cooler and more humid intervals were a feature of Ice Age climate at this subtropical latitude in Chile. The influence of the southern westerlies may have been greater at this time, and the effect of the Pacific anticyclone was apparently weakened. The climate today, wet in winter and dry in summer, supports broad sclerophyll vegetation that developed during the Holocene with the arrival of paleo-Indians and the extinction of mastodon and horse.