Preliminary suggestions on the Pleistocene palaeovegetation around the Biśnik Cave (Częstochowa Upland, Poland) based on studies of molecular fossils from cave sediments

Bioenik Cave is an im por tant site of Mid dle Palaeo lithic, with the lon gest se quence of Neanderthal set tle ment phases in Cen tral Eu rope. In the pre vi ous stud ies of the Bioenik sed i ments, dif fer ent el e ments of palaeoenvironment in the pe ri - ods of Neanderthal oc cu pa tion have been re cog nised, ex cept of palaeovegetation, which could not be de rived be cause of lack of pre served plant mi cro- or macrofossils. The cur rent work is an at tempt to re con struct palaeovegetation in vi - cin ity of the Bioenik Cave, us ing anal y sis of com po si tion of plant-de rived n-al kanes, pre served in sed i ments. In our study, we an a lyzed one sam ple from each of the sed i ment’s lay ers 11 – 19c (early Late Pleis to cene and late Mid dle Pleis to cene). Abun dant n-al kanes (mostly n-C27, n-C29 and n-C31) were found in all the sam pled lay ers ex cept for the lay ers 12, 16 and 19d, show ing no al kanes at all. There is clear di ver si fi ca tion of n-al kanes com po si tion and CPI (car bon pref er ence in dex) val ues be tween lay ers. Anal y sis of this com po si tion, al lows us to claim that the lay ers 11 and 14 were ac cu mu lated when the cave’s vi cin ity was cov ered by dense co nif er ous for ests, hence upon warm cli mate. The lay ers 19, 19a lower, 19b and 19c, pre sumably orig i nated dur ing cold pe ri ods when open wood lands or grass lands dom i nated. The other an a lyzed lay ers could be con nected with in ter me di ate veg e ta tion in form of open wood land. How ever, not all of the achieved re sults stay in com pli ance with the ac tual stra tig ra phy, es tab lished bas ing on lithological data and palaeo ec ol ogy of fos sil fauna, and we hope that ex pla na tion of this dis crep ancy would be pos si ble af ter more ex ten sive stud ies of mo lec u lar fos sils are done.