\begin{center}Dating a thick Neogene flowstone (Conturines cave, Dolomites, Italy): a multi-method approach\end{center}.

Conturines cave opens at the base of a cirque wall at 2775 m a.s.l. in the Dolomites(Northern Italy). Large parts of the cave floor are covered by an extensive and unusuallythick (up to 3.4 m) flowstone. This and other speleothems are inactive, corrodedand cut by fractures. Eight drill cores covering the entire stratigraphy of the basalflowstone were obtained along the course of the gallery. Four methods were applied toestablish a chronological framework of this unique long-term paleoenvironmentalarchive. 230Th ages on several cores demonstrate that calcite deposition had terminatedbefore 650 ka BP. U-Pb dating was attempted but yielded unfavourably low U/Pbratios. Polarity determinations of demagnetised samples were carried out on the full length offour cores. Most cores show already reverse magnetisation in their top parts. Two long coresdrilled in the proximal part of the speleothem show replicated evidence of several polaritychanges, providing a strong indication that the flowstone reaches back at least to thePliocene. Finally, pollen was extracted from flowstone samples in order to establish independentpalynostratigraphic constraints. The pollen density is low, but the presence of Nyssa indicatesan Early Pleistocene or Pliocene age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]