This dataset presents a palaeoecological record of stratigraphy, radiocarbon-dated chronology, spores of coprophilous fungi (SCF), pollen and charcoal from lake sediment cores collected from Laguna La Yeguada, Panama. Laguna La Yeguada is an elliptical lake situated in the Veraguas Province within the Isthmus of Panama (8°27' N, 80°51' W). The data were collected to investigate the Late Quaternary megafaunal extinction in Panama and establish the first detailed record of megafaunal presence/absence, vegetation dynamics, and fire activity, respectively, spanning the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene. The data was collected for the PhD research titled: Ecological consequences of Pleistocene megafaunal declines in the Neotropics (https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2859430), funded by https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE/S007504/1. The data is to be published in the Quaternary Science Reviews Journal: Pym, F., Franco-Gaviria, F., Raczka, M., Adediran, G.A., Sitch, S. and Urrego, D.H. The Timing and Ecological Consequences of the Late Pleistocene Megafaunal Declines on the Isthmus of Panama: Implications for Trophic Rewilding, Quaternary Science Reviews.

Occurrences of angiosperm pollen grains from North American sections crossing the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary were complied from previous publications. Morphological characters for pollen taxa from the Maastrichtian and Palaeocene were encoded based on their descriptions and following the methodology of Lupia (Lupia, R. (1999) ‘Discordant morphological disparity and taxonomic diversity during the Cretaceous angiosperm radiation: North American pollen record’, Paleobiology, 25(1), pp. 1–28. doi:10.1666/0094-8373(1999)025<0001:DMDATD>2.3.CO;2.) for disparity analyses. References and character table are included.

This data was collected in order to investigate the level of evidence for: A) a relationship between the strength of the geodynamo and Earth surface UV-B irradiance; B) increased surface UV-B irradiance during the Laschamps Event (the last major geomagnetic excursion, ca. 41ka BP). The study considered subfossil Pinus Diploxylon (Pinus D.) pollen grains obtained from the annually laminated Japanese Lake Suigetsu sediment record (Bronk Ramsey et al., 2020; Nakagawa et al., 2003). The primary response variable is the abundance of para-coumaric acid (a UV-B absorbing compound) in the sporopollenin of the subfossil pollen grains. The secondary response variable is the probability of grain malformation. There are three key spreadsheets: 1) GCMS_pCA_day_dependent_calbration_simple.csv - estimated abundances of para-coumaric acid in the subfossil Pinus Diploxylon pollen at different depths/times of the Lake Suigetsu sediment core. 2) Suigetsu_malformations_simple.csv - malformations counts in the Lake Suigetsu subfossil Pinus Dipoxylon pollen 3) gc_cultivar_data_simple.csv - estimated abundance of para-coumaric acid in Pinus pollen in a controlled cultivar experiment (considering response to UV-B flux) Descriptor files (with corresponding names) are also provided. This dataset contains data generated by NERC Grant NE/Y002652/1:Reconstructing UV radiation over the Laschamps Geomagnetic Excursion.