Eniko Katalin Magyari

Hungarian Academy of Sciences | HAS · Research Group for Paleontology

Central-eastern to southeastern Europe, from Bohemia to Greece is home to some of the richest ore deposits on earth, with archaeological evidence suggesting a long history of metal use. However, the exact timing and extent of past metal processing activities remains unclear. The Middle Ages and Early Modern period (c. 500-1800 common era (CE)) in E...

A Pátkai-tározót 1975-ben alakították ki a Velencei-tó vízellátásának szabályozására, de másodlagosan horgász-, illetve jóléti tóként is hasznosítják. A vízminőség a 90-es évektől drasztikusan leromlott valószínűsíthetően a mederkotrások elmaradása és a horgászok által vízbe szórt etetőanyag miatt, ezért a tározó csak korlátozottan alkalmas a Velen...

The Neolithic and Copper Age (CA) of Hungary (6000–2800 cal bc) represents a meticulous construction of settlement structure, material culture, arable farming and herding techniques with at least one, but likely several reappearing population movements that brought in innovations and possibly contributed to the societal changes in this period. The...

This study investigates the last two centuries sedimentation dynamics in four high-altitude lakes located in Southern Carpathians, Romania. Furthermore, a novel approach is proposed for identifying the anthropic or natural underlying causes, by comparison of the acceleration of the change in sedimentation rate with a baseline growth rate trend prov...

Understanding the temporal and spatial environmental response to past climate change during the Last Glacial-Interglacial Transition (LGIT, 16-8 ka) across Europe relies on precise chronologies for palaeoenvironmental records. Tephra layers (volcanic ash) are a powerful chronological tool to synchronise disparate records across the continent. Yet,...

Excavation campaigns conducted at the Pécel‐Kis hársas site (Hungary) between 2014 and 2017 yielded the remains of a mature female woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) and six lithic artefacts. Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the rhinoceros died ca. 20.4k cal a BP, at the very end of the Last Glacial Maximum and, considering the position o...

To reconstruct changes in vegetation, temperature, and sediment geochemistry through the last 6.5 cal ka BP, in the Subcarpathian belt of the Eastern Carpathians (Romania), pollen, branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (brGDGTs) and X-ray fluorescence analyses have been integrated. Pollen and brGDGTs (a bacterial lipid biomarker proxy) are...

Quantitative reconstructions of past land cover are necessary to determine the processes involved in climate-human-land-cover interactions. We present the first temporally continuous and most spatially extensive pollen-based land-cover reconstruction for Europe over the Holocene (last 11 700 cal yr BP). We describe how vegetation cover has been qua...

Variation in community composition and species turnover are different types of beta diversity, expressing non-directional and directional changes, respectively. While directional changes (e.g. turnover) along geographic gradients can be studied in any direction depending on the hypothesis of interest to researchers, temporal changes can only be mea...

Ciomadul’s landscape represents an amalgamation of volcanic edifices that build up a lava dome complex. Spanning almost 1 million years of volcanic and geotectonic evolution, Ciomadul periodically released large amounts of volcaniclastic material that modified the local topography. The volcanic activity constrained the Olt River by carving the narr...

Continuous lake sediment archives extending back to the coldest stage of the last glaciation (LGM: last glacial maximum) are particularly rare in the Carpathian basin. Of outstanding value is the crater lake of St. Anne (Sf. Ana / Szent Anna), at the bottom of which lake and mire sediments have accumulated and give us insight into the paleoenvironm...

Ciomadul’s last explosive eruptions produced large volumes of pumice and ash, so-called tephra, which had the potential to be dispersed by wind over wide areas and deposited in geological archives (e.g., lakes and ocean floors). Using the chemical fingerprinting of volcanic glass in tephra deposits, at least four main eruptive events can be disting...

Lake Sf. Ana at the top of Ciomadul volcano is one of the only open water crater lakes in the Carpathian Mountains, and has been providing a habitat to bacteria, algae, and microscopic animals in the pelagic zone, as well as rich lakeshore wildlife for 27,000 thousand years. The water of the lake is considered to be clean even today, although plent...

Ciomadul (Csomád) is the youngest volcano in the Carpathians and the Carpatho-Pannonian Region whose latest eruptions may have been witnessed by Palaeolithic people. It is the only volcano in the region where, although with little probability, future eruptions may occur. Ciomadul was a lava dome complex, and its volcanic activity included both effu...

Here we report and document the occurrence of the diatom Gomphonema lacunicola Patrick et Freese 1961 from the Pâreng Mts of the Carpathian Mountains, Romania. This observation was made within the framework of a systematic sampling campaign and analyses that were conducted in the Southern Carpathians, covering 40 mountain lakes for discovering the...

Sedimentary charcoal records are widely used to reconstruct regional changes in fire regimes through time in the geological past. Existing global compilations are not geographically comprehensive and do not provide consistent metadata for all sites. Furthermore, the age models provided for these records are not harmonised and many are based on olde...

Here we provide the first chironomid record and associated summer air-temperature (T VII ) reconstruction between ca. 16,800–9100 cal yr BP from Lake Saint Anne (SZA), situated in the Eastern Carpathians. SZA was formed by the youngest volcanic eruption of Ciomadul volcano at ca. 29,600 cal yr BP. Our main goals in this study are to test whether wa...

Studying local extinction times, associated environmental and human population changes during the last glacial termination provides insights into the causes of mega- and microfauna extinctions. In East-Central (EC) Europe, Palaeolithic human groups were present throughout the last glacial maximum (LGM), but disappeared suddenly around 15 200 cal yr...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239209.].

Here we report and document the first Romanian occurrence of the diatom Gomphonema angustivalva E. Reichardt 1997 from a proglacial lake of the Carpathian Mts. Identifying this narrow-valved gomphonemoid taxon (valva width < 5 μm) requires the exploration of ultrastructure using scanning electron microscopy. We observed the species in the material...

Recent decades have been marked by unprecendented environmental changes which threaten the integrity of freshwater systems and their ecological value. Although most of these changes can be attributed to human activities, disentagling natural and anthropogenic drivers remains a challenge. In this study, surface sediments from Lake Ighiel, a mid-alti...

A multiproxy approach including chironomid, diatom, pollen and geochemical analyses was applied on short gravitational cores retrieved from an alpine lake (Lacul Bâlea) in the Southern Carpathians (Romania) to unveil how this lake responded to natural and anthropogenic forcing over the past 500 years. On the basis of chironomid and diatom assemblag...

The body size of aquatic invertebrates is, to a great extent, dependent on ambient temperature, but size distributions are also determined by other factors like food supply and predation. The effect of temperature on organisms is formulated in the temperature–size hypothesis, which predicts a smaller body size with increasing temperature. In this s...

Remains of aquatic biota preserved in mountain lake sediments provide an excellent tool to study lake ecosystem responses to past climate change. In the PROLONG project a multi-proxy study was performed on sediments of glacier-formed lakes from the Retezat Mountains, Southern Carpathians (Romania). The studied lakes (Lake Brazi and Gales) are situa...

Sediment cores obtained from two deep (>15 m) glacial lakes were analyzed in context of terrestrial vegetation development and in-lake processes from the Retezat Mountains (Southern Carpathians, Romania). Only the Holocene parts were chosen for study for testing what is the connection between geochemical changes and biotas around and in the lakes....

How genetic diversity of populations reacts to neutral or adaptive processes such as population bottlenecks, immigration or local adaptation are central questions of population genetics. They may be directly answered through ancient DNA analysis, however such studies in plants are remarkably scarce, owing to the difficulty of gaining population-sca...

This paper focuses on the Late Glacial (LG) and Holocene regional and local establishment times of several tree and shrub species in the Retezat Mountains (South Carpathians) using pollen, stomata and plant macrofossil records from four lakes situated at different altitudes. We used the empirical and rational pollen percentage limits to infer the l...

Here we report the fi rst occurrence of the diatom Gomphonema sancti-naumii D. Metzeltin & Z. Levkov beside the type locality, during the Last Glacial Maximum. The species presented here with its morphological characteristics demonstrated on detailed scanning electron microscope (SEM) pictures and its palaeolimnological signifiance in diatom-based...

Two high-altitude lake-sediment sequences (Lake Lia, 1910 m a.s.l. and Lake Bucura, 2040 m a.s.l.) from the Retezat Mountains (South Carpathians, Romania) were analysed using multi-proxy methods to study responses of treeline, timberline and alpine/subalpine vegetation to climate change and human impact during the past 16,000 years. Woody species (...

As demonstrated by an increasing number of palaeoclimatic and palaeoecological studies, rapid climate change events (RCCs) occurred frequently in the Holocene and their timing correlates well in the European records. Changes in vegetation composition and environmental conditions were significant during these RCC events. In this study we use high re...

The aim of this paper is to compare the wood charcoal assemblages from several archaeological sites near Polgár (north-eastern Hungary) with the pollen records of the same area in order to infer the character of forest communities that developed between 7500 and 6500 cal. yr BP. One question of particular interest is the structure of the woodlands...

To investigate treeline and timberline dynamics in the Retezat Mountains (Romanian Carpathians), late glacial and Holocene sediment sequences from four lakes were studied. The south and north slopes of the mountain range were compared using two lakes from the north flank (Lake Brazi, 1740 m a.s.l. and Lake Gales, 1990 m a.s.l) and two from the sout...

Climatic changes were studied using siliceous algae (diatoms and Chrysophyta stomatocysts) analyses in four mountain lakes in the Retezat Mountains in the South-Carpathian Mountains with the aim to search for synchrony in aquatic ecosystem responses. According to the basal radiocarbon dating of the lake sediment cores, these lakes were formed aroun...

Four high-altitude lake sediment sequences (Lake Brazi, 1740 m .as.l., Lake Gales 1990 m a.s.l., Lake Bucura, 2040 m a.s.l. and Lake Lia, 1910 m a.s.l.) were analyzed using multi-proxy methods (pollen, stomata, plant macrofossil and micro- and macrocharcoal) in order to study responses of treeline and alpine/subalpine vegetation to climate change a...

Navicula haueri Grunow, a characteristic Neogene freshwater diatom, belong ing to the Navi-santiqua Subsection was studied by means of light and, for the fi rst time, scanning electron micro scopy. This diatom was reported previously from Middle and Upper Miocene lacustrine deposits from the Carpathian Realm. Together with its single variety angust...

Fire is recognized as a critical process with significant impacts on biota and the atmosphere. In this study, 11 micro- and macrocharcoal sedimentary records extracted from peat bogs and lakes at different elevations in the Carpathian region (in Hungary and Romania) were used to explore the patterns and the potential underlying mechanisms in biomas...

What can students of the past do to establish the predominant land-use and settlement practices of populations who leave little or no artefactual discard as a testament to their lifeways? The traditional answer, especially in Eastern Europe, is to invoke often exogenous nomadic pastoralists whose dwelling in perpetuo mobile was based on yurts, mini...

A multi-proxy investigation (loss-on-igni-tion, major and trace elements, pollen, plant macro-fossil and siliceous algae) was carried out on the sediment of a crater lake (Lake Saint Ana, 950 m a.s.l.) from the Eastern Carpathian Mountains. Diatom-based transfer functions were applied to estimate the lake's trophic status and pH, while reconstructi...