Introduction

The last decades have witnessed great advances in paleogeography (reconstructing the former distribution and topography of land and sea) and paleoclimatology (inquiring into the climatic changes of the past). Paleobotany has enormously expanded the documentation of fossil plant groups, floras and vegetation types, supporting its conclusions by technically much improved analyses of microfossils (pollen) and anatomical details. An increasing quantity and quality of all these informations from the geosciences is available when we follow the history of the biosphere up to the present. Simultaneously, research from the biosciences on the morphology, ecology, distribution, systematics and evolution of extant vascular plants, and on the ecogeographical differentiation of the vegetation cover of our planet, has made enormous progress. Thus, a synthetic geo-and bioscientific approach becomes more and more feasible and urgent for further advances in the many problems of common concern. Nevertheless, considerable obstacles for an exchange of relevant informations and subsequent cooperative efforts result from the fact, that paleo- and neobotanists usually work in separate institutions, use methods of their own, and publish in different journals.