Response of vegetation to climatic changes of different duration in the late neogene.

The late Neogene climate is characterized both by a general cooling at middle and high latitudes and by short-term temperature oscillations that developed into the ice ages. The effect of these climatic forcings on vegetation is known in only a few cases where the fossil record is sufficiently long, closely sampled and well dated. These records are important in testing models of vegetational change and in demonstrating that present vegetation is a product of past climatic variability on different temporal scales.