Did the Dinaric Alps force an arid climate and speciation during Miocene Climatic Optimum?

安第斯山脉和喜马拉雅山脉等大型山脉的崛起与气候之间的因果关系已经得到证明。在那里，显著的隆升引发了气候变化，导致了整个山脉的沉积环境和动物物种形成的对比。考虑到沉积和古生物记录，我们检验了这一关系存在的假设，并在较低的山脉，如欧洲东南部的迪纳里克阿尔卑斯(迪纳里德斯)，对沉积和物种形成产生了类似程度的影响。沉积学和古生物学资料表明，迪纳里德山脉的地形抬升在中新世气候最佳时期(MCO)的区域对比(干旱与潮湿条件和动物群分布)的发展中发挥了重要作用。然而，跨山脉的盆地是否同时代的不确定性极大地阻碍了因果关系的分析。这种不确定性在于迪纳里德内部沉积序列的年龄限制非常差。在这项研究中，我们将检验这样一种假设，即在MCO期间，迪纳里德山脉的生长影响了不同的气候条件，导致了不同的沉积环境和跨迪纳里德山脉盆地的动物物种形成。这一假设将通过对位于迪纳里德内部的盆地进行系统的测年来验证，方法是对凝灰岩层和碳酸盐沉积物进行U-Pb测年。此外，这将得到对整个范围内动物的时间和空间分布的修订的支持。最后，将这项工作提供的新的数值年龄约束与现有的数值年龄(主要限于迪纳里德山脉外部)相结合，将使我们能够在造山带范围内对比孤立盆地中的沉积和动物群序列。由此产生的数据框架将使我们能够准确地评估迪纳里德山脉等“小”山脉的增长、区域气候变化及其生物群的适应性辐射之间的因果联系。

Causal links between the rise of large mountain ranges such as the Andes and Himalayas and climate have been demonstrated. There, a significant uplift provokes climate change lead-ing to contrasting depositional environments and fauna speciation across the range. Consider-ing the sedimentary and paleontological records we test the hypothesis that this relationship exists and affects deposition and speciation to a similar degree in the lower mountain ranges such as the Dinaric Alps (Dinarides) in SE Europe. Sedimentological and paleontological data suggest that the topographic uplift of the Dinarides played an important role in the development of the regional contrasting, i.e. arid vs humid conditions and fauna distribution across the Dinarides during the Miocene Climatic Optimum (MCO). However, the analysis of causal relations is greatly hampered by the uncertainty about whether the basins across the mountain range were coeval or not. This uncertainty lies in very poor age constraints of the sedimentary successions in the internal part of the Dinarides. In this study, we will test the hypothesis that the growth of the Dinarides influenced contrasting climatic conditions leading to contrasting depositional environments and fauna speciation in the basins across the Dinarides during the MCO. This hypothesis will be tested by a systematic dating of the basins located in the internal part of the Dinarides using U-Pb dating of tuff layers and carbonate sediments. Furthermore, this will be supported by the revision of the temporal and spatial distribution of fauna across the range. Finally, integration of the new numerical age constraints provided by this work with the existing numerical ages (mostly constrained to the external part of the Dinarides) will allow us an orogen-wide correlation of sedimentary and faunal successions in the isolated basins. The resulting data framework will enable us to precisely assess causal links between the growth of the “small” mountain ranges, such as the Dinarides, the regional climate change, and the adaptive radiation of its biota.