Aesculus Cyclobalanopsis

He, Wenlong, Roth-Nebelsick, Anita & Sun, Bainian, 2022, Leaf trait data of two Miocene floras from eastern China and its palaeoclimate implications, Palaeontologia Electronica (a 23) 26 (2), pp. 1-16 : 9-10

Aesculus Cyclobalanopsis

Pisiscia Fagus

Dalbergia Cocculus

Berberis Cornus

Mahonia Crataegus

Morus Ficus

Fothergilla Morus

Alseodaphne Loropetalum

Phoebe Indocalamus a warm and moist climate during the middle Miocene (Sun and He, 1987; He and Wang, 2021).

The fossil floras of Toupi and Shengxian were considered in previous studies on regional palaeoclimate by using CA (Yao et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2021). However, these CA results have indicated almost identical MAT (15.7 - 16.1°C) for both the Toupi flora and Shengxian flora (Yao et al., 2011; Table 4). Meanwhile, CA results indicating an equable subtropical climate throughout China in the Miocene (Wang et al., 2021) were questioned by Miao et al. (2022).

The CLAMP results obtained in the present study indicate a cooler MAT (13.6 °C) for Shengxian, caused by a certain seasonality as CLAMP provided a lower CMMT for Shengxian compared to Toupi ( Table 4).

At the present day, a dry-cold winter and warm-humid summer monsoon climate prevails in eastern China, and apparently since the late Oligocene (An, 2000; Sun and Wang, 2005; Wu et al., 2022). The results of the present study may possibly indicate a moderate intensification of seasonality from the middle Miocene to late Miocene, i.e, the DT increased from 15.5 °C (Toupi) at the middle Miocene to 19.8 °C (Shengxian) at the late Miocene. That would mean the East Asian monsoon may have intensified during that time. This assumption is partly supported by Sun and Wang (2005) and recent data (Yang et al., 2021). Monsoonal development during the Miocene is, however, complex and a controversial topic. The results of the present study are based on two fossil leaf assemblages, and more sites should be studied to obtain information on climate development in eastern China during the Miocene.