Sinich/Sinigo, situated within the Athesian Volcanic District in Northern Italy, yielded an exceptional plant fossil assemblage from the middle Kungurian (Cisuralian), including permineralized stems, compressions, and molds of such diverse plant groups as lycopsids, sphenophytes, ferns, seed ferns, cordaitaleans, and conifers. Notably, the site features the earliest record of coexistence of walchian and voltzian Voltziales conifers, whose exceptional three-dimensional preservation provides evidence of xeromorphic adaptations such as fleshy and deciduous leaves. Additionally, the basin contains the oldest in situ fossil forest in Italy, which was preserved in its original growth position on a deltaic sheetflood fan and subsequently buried by mass flows, illustrating the conifers' significant ecomorphological adaptability in response to waterlogged conditions. Palynological analyses reveal a predominance of woody tissue and charcoal in the lower and middle part of the succession with an increase of spores and pollen in the upper part of the succession. Geochemical analyses on trace elements are rather monotonous in the lower part of the successions but show notable fluctuations in the upper part with pronounced peaks in the abundance of S, As, Pb. Indices of chemical alteration (CIA, PIA, CIW) support significant environmental changes in the later stages of the evolution of the basin, while the isotopic composition of bulk organic carbon remained stable. These analyses underscore Sinich/Sinigo as a key site for understanding the ecological and environmental dynamics of the middle Kungurian, offering valuable insights into the interactions between volcanic activity, weathering and biotic responses.

Since its appearance on land in the early Paleozoic, life has conquered the continents with astonishing diversity. From the deepest caves to the atmosphere, numerous evolutionary innovations such as active flight or seeds paved the way for life beyond water. However, we still have a rough idea of the timelines of terrestrialization, mainly because fossil evidence remains patchy. It is therefore crucial to know the age and taphonomy of the few finds well. One such example is Tridentinosaurus antiquus, Italy’s oldest fossil reptile from the lower Permian Athesian Volcanic Group, Southern Alps. This specimen potentially enlightens the earliest ecosystems that coped with extensive volcanism, but its stratigraphic context is barely referenced. We clarify the provenience, age, fossilization and paleoecological meaning of T. antiquus using sampling-history review, field mapping, mineral chemistry and U-Pb radioisotopic dating. Accordingly, rock petrography and biotite composition prove that a crystal-rich, monotonous intermediate tuff from the Regnana Formation at Stramaiolo, Northern Italy, is the host rock of T. antiquus. Biotite crystallization in both field samples and the rock attached to the fossil yield values of 670±17°C and 1.7–2.0 kbar close to the granite solidus, strengthening a common magmatic history. The tuff formed from hot, diluted pyroclastic density currents that filled a paleo-valley between small volcanoes around 275 Ma. T. antiquus, hence, is par-autochthonous and truly inhabited the volcanic landscapes. Along with fossil plants and other similar taphocoenoses worldwide, this fossil documents the presence of differentiated ecosystems in late Paleozoic volcanic environments.

The reconstruction of paleocurrents is crucial for understanding ancient environments and the past climate. Such reconstructions are often based on the distribution of marine species as well as on geochemical proxies. In this talk, a new approach is proposed which uses the occurrence of glendonites as a proxy for cool bottom currents. Glendonites are pseudomorphs after the hydrous carbonate mineral ikaite that only forms in environments characterised by near-freezing temperatures. The pseudomorph has been identified in a number of Phanerozoic successions deposited in high latitudes. However, occurrences in mid-latitudinal sections have also been reported. These occurrences are of particular interest as they document the formation of glendonite in temperate areas, where the prevailing temperatures were above the threshold required for the precipitation of the precursor mineral ikaite.

This study investigates a recently discovered glendonite-bearing interval from the Buttenheim clay pit section (Bavaria, Germany), which represents the southernmost glendonite occurrence in the late Pliensbachian (Early Jurassic). Based on geochemical and sedimentological analyses, the glendonite-bearing interval is interpreted as the result of cold bottom-water masses which originated in the Arctic Sea and migrated southward into the Tethys Ocean, thereby passing the extensive shelf areas of the European epicontinental sea. The influx of cold water caused a significant temperature decrease in the deeper parts of the epeiric sea, which led to the formation of glendonites in lower latitudes. This model can help to explain unexpected mid-latitudinal glendonite occurrences and can serve as a valuable tool for the reconstruction of paleocurrent patterns.

The Late Cretaceous epoch was characterized by extreme greenhouse climates and widespread glaucony formation in marine shallow water settings. In the Danubian Cretaceous Basin (DCB, Bavaria, SE-Germany), contemporaneous and closely-spaced shallow-marine accumulation of glauconitic strata in the eastern and the glaucony-free Neuburger Siliceous Earth in the western parts of the basin during Cenomanian–early Turonian times represents an unsolved phenomenon with great potential to unravel important aspects of the poorly understood mechanisms of Late Cretaceous glaucony formation.

An integrated sedimentologic, stratigraphic, mineralogic and geochemical approach reveals that the striking small-scale lithofacies differences can be attributed to the geological structure of the hinterland and the nature of elemental influx: in the eastern DCB, deeply chemically weathered granites and gneisses of the Bohemian Massif were leached due to the warm climate and high precipitation rates, and elements crucial for glaucony formation (K, Fe, Si, Al) were amply supplied by rivers, fueling a shallow marine greensand giant (Regensburg Formation). In the western DCB, a hinterland consisting of karstified Jurassic carbonates devoid of elements necessary for glaucony formation and a lack of significant fluvial input repressed the shallow marine glaucony factory. Furthermore, the originally rather marly sediment of the Neuburg Siliceous Earth of the Wellheim Formation was affected by early diagenetic silicification due to a combination of inflowing silica-rich groundwater from karst aquifers and dissolution of biogenic siliceous components. Additionally, our geochemical data provide the first evidence of a redox-sensitive trace metal drawdown during Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 in shallow water/coastal settings in Germany.

Massive and (geologically) fast shallow-marine glaucony formation was a widespread phenomenon during the Cretaceous greenhouse world that has no recent analogue. Based on several integrated case studies from different basins around the Mid-European Island, we intend to better understand the geochemical and depositional constraints on Late Cretaceous glaucony formation. X-ray diffraction analyses showed that the abundant green grains and matrix of all sites definitely constitute glauconitic minerals with high-order, 1M-type layer stacking. Inorganic geochemical analyses, normalized to Al and compared to average shale (AS), demonstrate that most element/Al ratios of greensand deposits are higher than AS values, including the chemical index of alteration (CIX). These observations suggest an intense chemical weathering of the exposed hinterlands, resulting in a continuous supply of essential elements required for glaucony authigenesis in nearshore settings under variably reducing and/or oxidizing redox conditions, associated with somewhat increased palaeo-productivities. The leaching of palaeosols and swampy coastal low-/wetlands during major transgressions related to eustatic Late Cretaceous sea-level rises was an important process for trace metal and nutrient mobilization. Furthermore, the significant influx of terrestrial organic matter from the densely vegetated continents suggests a significant impact of plant-decay-related potassium to glaucony maturation. In a nutshell, our new integrated data provide novel insights into the anactualistic formative processes of authigenic glauconitic minerals during greenhouse phases of Earth history.

The continental response to global climate forcing remains difficult to predict due to the intricate feedbacks among climate, vegetation and other land surface changes. This is exemplified by the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT; 34 Ma), where a 2-3°C cooling event is observed in marine records around the world, but continental records from the North American Great Plains suggest more extreme cooling of 7-8°C instead. Here we present a new Oligocene record from the adjacent high-elevation North American Cordillera (Cook Ranch section; SW Montana) constrained by four radiometrically dated tuffs. Dual clumped isotopes (Δ₄₇ and Δ₄₈) of this record suggest no major changes in temperature across the EOT, but instead show extreme cooling of 10±1°C in the early Oligocene (32-30 Ma). Based on paleobotanical and climate model data, we interpret this as summer cooling coeval with a decrease in atmospheric CO₂ identified in recent proxy compilations. This long-term Oligocene cooling may explain the lack in mammal response observed in North American fossils compared with other continents.