Pollen grains and Spores

Above: modern bisaccate Pinus pollen, middle: fern spore from the Upper Jurassic, below: pollen from the Upper Triassic Source: BGR

The pollen of seed plants consists of single pollen grains. Spores come from ferns, bear's lobes, horsetails, mosses and fungi.

Pollen grains and spores are used exclusively for propagation, are often produced in huge numbers and are widely distributed by wind, water and animals. Since their walls consist of a very resistant organic compound (called sporopollenin), fossilized pollen grains and spores can be found. Their repartition in deposited sediment layers shows us the detailed and often very complicated vegetation and climate development of the past.

In addition, pollen grains and spores of plant species that existed only within short periods of the earth's history or formed very characteristic associations over short periods of time can be used for dating sediments deposited in continental and shallow marine facies zones ("biostratigraphy").

Pollen grains and spores as well as dinoflagellate cysts are often summed up under the term palynolomorphs.

Fields of application for analysis on palynomorphs in the BGR

In addition to the analysis of Late Palaeozoic (Zechstein) and Mesozoic sediments (Triassic - Lower Cretaceous) for age dating and environmental interpretation, biostratigraphic dating of Neogene and Quaternary sedimentary layers from the southern North Sea and Lower Saxony (vibrocores, sedimentary drillings, outcrops) are also carried out. This age dating is essential for the development and verification of sedimentation models and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions (e.g. postglacial sea level rise in the North Sea) and provide the chronological classification of seismically differentiated sedimentary bodies, which in turn are essential for the comprehensive mapping of the near-surface underground.