Terrestrial pollen records from southern Africa suggest a strong extension of the mountainous ericaceous vegetation during the Last Glacial. Here, we present a pollen record of the marine core MD96-2048 retrieved by the Marion Dufresne from the Indian Ocean ~120 km south of the Limpopo River mouth (26°10'S 34°01'E in 660m water depth). Our record corroborates the extension of open mountainous scrubland (including elements with affinity to the Cape Flora) for the Last Glacial as well as for other glacial periods of the past 300 ka.
The sedimentation at the site of MD96-2048 is slow and continuous. The upper 6 meters (down till 350 ka) have been analysed for pollen and spores at millennial resolution. The terrestrial pollen assemblages indicate that during interglacials the vegetation of eastern South Africa and southern Mozambique largely consisted of evergreen and deciduous forests. During glacials open mountainous shrubland dominated. Montane forest with Podocarpus was favoured during intermediate periods. The pattern strongly suggests a shifting of altitudinal vegetation belts in the mountains primarily depending on temperature, although the effects of low atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations cannot be excluded.
We compare our results from eastern South Africa with a marine pollen record from the eastern South Atlantic off the coast of Angola (ODP Site 1078). The vegetation and climate of southern Africa seems to follow a mid to high latitude rhythm, in which the glacial-interglacial contrast is more important than the precessional forced monsoon system of tropical Africa.