likely had a mesic upper microthermal to lower mesothermal climate, in which winter temperatures rarely dropped low enough for snow, and which were seasonably equitable. The Okanagan highlands paleoforest surrounding the lakes have been described as precursors to the modern Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests of Eastern North America and Eastern Asia. Based on the fossil biotas the lakes were higher and cooler then the coeval coastal forests preserved in the Puget Group and Chuckanut Formation of Western Washington, which are described as lowland tropical forest ecosystems. Estimates of the paleoelevation between higher than the coastal forests. This is consistent with the paleoelevation estimates for the lake systems, which range between , which is similar to the modern elevation , but higher. Estimates of the mean annual temperature have been derived from Climate leaf analysis multivariate program (CLAMP) and leaf margin analysis (LMA) of the Republic paleoflora. The CLAMP results after multiple linear regressions for Republic gave a mean annual temperature of approximately , while the LMA gave . This is lower than the mean annual temperature estimates given for the coastal Puget Group, which is estimated to have been between . The bioclimatic analysis for Republic suggests a mean annual precipitation amount of . Paleobiota The formation is host to a highly diverse assemblage of plants and insects including some of the last records of taxa before extinction and the first appearances of taxa. Bryophytes Dillhoff et al. (2013) reference undescribed moss specimens known from the Klondike Mountain Formation known from vegetative gametophytes and they noted them to be similar to undescribed specimens from the Allenby Formation and Horsefly shales. Lycophytes Rare specimens of Selaginella fossils were noted by Wehr (1998), with no species level description. Pteridophytes Gymnosperms Three major groups of gymnosperms are present in the Klondike Mountain Formation, with the most speciose being the pinophytes. The ginkgophytes are represented by two species pf Ginkgo, while an undescribed Zamiaceae member is the sole cycadophyte. Cycadophytes Gingkophytes Pinophytes Flowering plants Angiosperms, commonly called flowering plants belong to a single plant clade which diverged from other plants during the prior to the Cretaceous, and began to rapidly evolve and radiate by the Middle Cretaceous. Angiosperm diversification during the Cretaceous and Paleocene resulted in eight recognized clades that are segregated into two groups the Basal angiosperms and Core angiosperms. Present in the Klondike Mountain Formation are four of the eight groups,