WHAT'S NEW
On May 1 a special local market opened its gate to the visitors in the Miocene Park.
The European Geoparks Week, taking place at late May early June each year, is a European – wide festival of Geoparks. The Bükk National Park Directorate endorsed this event.
Bird and Tree Day will be celebrated on May 7-8 at the Miocene Park.
Leaf Impressions
A recent paleobotanical study identified 64 taxa among the large collection of macrofloral remains, nearly 15 thousand leaves. (Hably, 1985) The assemblage is dominated by laurophyllous plants, indicative of a vegetation in warm and humid, subtropical climate. Most of the abundant plant remains are in the basal part of the rhyolite tuff, but 27 plant species have been identified from leaf imprints on the palaeosurface( footprint sandstone), too.
Tropical rain forest foilage blended with creeping palms,to give shelter to the animals. It was multi-storeyed and dominated by palm, laurel and magnolia, as well as giant pines rising above. The drip-tips of the leaf-impressions testify to a wet climate.
The average temperature was 25C, with a yearly precipitation of more than 3 thousand mm.
The predominantly palaeotropical flora of Ipolytarnóc is a remnant of the flora inhabiting a terrain(micro-continent) that moved at that time, on to much more southern latitudes, from Africa to Europe. It represents an environment and a vegetation that were alien to Europe at this age and did not survive anywhere else on the planet.