European Palaeobotany and Palynology Conference 2026

Reconstructing past mountain elevations is challenging and critical for understanding how biodiversity responds to landscape and habitat changes. We demonstrate the potential to reconstruct past elevation profiles by measuring the abundance of ultraviolet-B (UV-B; 280–315 nm)- absorbing chemical compounds produced in the outer walls of plant pollen grains. Our analysis, based on a large dataset of nearly 2000 pollen grains from the Himalaya and Hengduan Mountains, reveals that the chemical compounds in the pollen wall scale predictably with elevation and insolation. These signals are also well preserved in fossil sporomorphs (pollen and spores) over long timescales, allowing their likely elevations to be inferred by comparison with a modern pollen reference. Our study establishes a solid first step: UV-B-absorbing chemical compounds in the pollen wall can serve as a novel proxy for paleoelevation reconstructions of mountains, thereby opening a new research avenue.