Dimitra Mantzouka

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle · Origines et Évolution

Premise The recognition of the Miocene Climate Optimum (MCO) in terrestrial palaeoenvironments of the Eastern Mediterranean is restricted to Lesbos and Lemnos Islands, Greece. This area is significant for its wood microfossils. A recently-discovered fossil wood assemblage from Gökçeada (Imbros) Island, Turkey, including tree species similar to the...

The first results of a multidisciplinary study on the Messinian evaporitic interval of the Govone section (northwestern Italy), subdivided into several sedimentary cycles, are reported here. Primary sulphate evaporites and intercalated shaly deposits, which formed during the Messinian Salinity Crisis, contain well-preserved and taxonomically determ...

We describe the first evidence of fossil Abies wood from the late early Miocene fossil plant assemblage of Wiesa in east Germany. The comparatively well-preserved piece of xylitic wood was recovered in the kaolin quarry at Hasenberg hill in Wiesa. The Wiesa assemblage is characterized as being allochthonous and partly parautochthonous mass deposits...

Petrified wood is important evidence of forest type and past climate. Studies from mainly the Neogene of Turkey described many fossil woods, and revealed valuable information about the paleoenvironment structure and climate. This is the first occurrence of plant macrofossils belonging to the Middle Miocene Climate Optimum, a crucial period in Earth...

A new fossil pine species from eastern Turkey is described and its botanical affinities are discussed. The sample was collected from the city of Kemaliye, Erzincan province, Turkey, and derives from the early-middle Miocene Divriği formation. Transverse, tangential and radial sections were taken from the petrified wood, and its palaeoxylotomical fe...

The development of grassland ecosystems across most continents was a multistage process involving the appearance of open-habitat grasses in the Paleogene, the mid-late Cenozoic spread of C3 grass-dominated habitats, and, finally, the Late Neogene expansion of C4 grasses at tropical and subtropical latitudes. In addition, the timing of these evoluti...

In the present article, the establishment of the species Castanopsis: C. bulgarica Man- tzouka, Ivanov, and Bozukov is proposed after the study of a new fagaceous fossil wood stem discovered in 2016 from a new Late Miocene to Early Pliocene plant fos- siliferous locality east of Boboshevo town, south-west Bulgaria. A detailed pal- aeoxylotomical st...

This work represents the first interdisciplinary approach on the relationship between travertines (as discharges of terrestrial geothermal fields related to the Neogene magmatism and active faulting) and plant fossils in Greece. The present contribution brings the first scientific data for the Quaternary-Pleistocene-Holocene palaeoflora of Zakyntho...

Since 1855, 25 different fossil wood types belonging to conifers (Cupressaceae s.l. with two different types of Taxodioxylon gypsaceum: root- and stem-wood), and angiosperms (families Magnoliaceae, Lauraceae, Platanaceae, Altingiaceae, Cercidiphyllaceae, Ulmaceae, ?Moraceae, Juglandaceae, Betulaceae, Malvaceae s.l., Sapotaceae, Oleaceae, one palm s...

Well-preserved leaves and rhizomes of the Mediterranean endemic marine angiosperm Posidonia oceanica and the rich associated mollusc and fish fauna are contained in the early Pleistocene shallow siliciclastic sediments of the Kritika Formation of the island of Rhodes (Greece). The leaf moulds are preserved in fine-grained sands, whereas the rhizome...

On November 2015 Lesbos Island has faced an ultimate recognition as one of UNESCO's Global Geoparks, an honor of its international significance based on its geological treasure as revealed by the existence of the famous early Miocene Petrified Forest and the variety of its geosites. The aim of this study is to draw a holistic approach for the palae...

Alonissos (Iliodroma) Island is really famous to palaeobotanists because of the type locality of Glypto­strobus europaeus (Brongniart) Unger only. Since the first report of the latter holotype no palaeobotanical work has taken place in Alonissos. This is the first research of the fossiliferous locality, along with new palaeobotanical, palynological...

This work represents the first interdisciplinary approach on the relationship between travertines (as discharges of terrestrial geothermal fields related to the Neogene magmatism and active faulting) and plant fossils in Greece. The present contribution brings the first scientific data for the Quaternary-Pleistocene-Holocene palaeoflora of Zakyntho...

Two specimens of fossil lauraceous woods from the Cainozoic (early Miocene) of Greece (southern part of Lesbos Island and central-eastern part of Lemnos Island) were studied. Their microscopic characteristics revealed two different kinds of fossil lauraceous woods with a different distribution of idioblasts (oil and/or mucilage cells) which do not...

During our recent palaeobotanical study of the Eastern Mediterranean (Lesbos and Lemnos Islands, Greece), new results on the Cainozoic fossil woods, both angiosperms and conifers, came out: a new methodology/identification key for the identification of lauraceous woods and especially Laurinoxylon species and their botanical affinities after the app...

The Petrified Forest of Lesbos has been the subject of the palaeobotanical research since the 19th century, but a number of inconsistencies still remain. One of them concerns the fossils described over 100 years ago that are characterized by lack of the accompanied illustrations, missing or even lost type material, rather general and uninformative...

Lauraceae is a family distributed worldwide with about 50 genera and more than 2500 species of mainly evergreen woods and shrubs. The fossil Tertiary members of Lauraceae in Europe are important because they are the most common trees and generally indicate warm climate with high humidity at the atmosphere even during the coolest season. Laurinoxylo...

Several specimens of Lauraceae fossil wood from the Cenozoic of Greece (southern part of Lesbos), the Czech Republic (Kadaň-Zadní Vrch Hill and Jáchymov), and Hungary (Ipolytarnóc) were studied. When considering whether they belonged to the speciose fossil wood genus Laurinoxylon, we reviewed the literature and data from InsideWood on fossil and mo...

General information on the geology of the Lower Jurassic in the Hellenides is presented, focused on the Chionistra section, where the first land plant macrofossil was recovered. This specimen is interpreted as a new record of Brachyphyllum elegans (Saporta) Barale and compared with the type material from the Upper Jurassic of France and some other...

Abstract: A new late Miocene (Tortonian) leaf flora has recently been recovered in the southernmost part of Europe on the island of Gavdos, Greece. So far, three conifers (Tetraclinis salicornioides, Taxodium dubium and Pinus sp.) and 27 fossil species/morphotypes of angiosperms have been recognized. Among them, some represent subtropical, partly e...

The 1 st workshop of the NECLIME working group on fossil wood Brno, June 5-8, 2013 Report (Dimitra Mantzouka, Torsten Utescher) The 1st Workshop of the NECLIME working group on fossil wood took place at the facilities of the Mendel University, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology in Brno at the Building P, Lecture room P220 , and – as it has bee...

The present contribution brings new scientific data for the palaeoflora of Lesbos based on new collections of plant fossils which were discovered in 2011 at six new localities from the southern part of Lesbos Island. This study resumes the published data both on the palaeovegetation of the Petrified Forest and the palaeogeography of Lesbos Island d...

The calcareous nannofossil biostratigraphy, performed at the basal part of the Vigla Shale Member (Frygano section, Ithaki Island), permits its biostratigraphic correlation with the uppermost part of BC21 biozone (Bown et al., 1998) and the upper part of NC7 biozone (Roth, 1978), which chronostratigraphically point to Late Aptian. This result reinf...