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Examining the chemistry of fossil mammals: stories from the past
Kendra Chritz, Scott Blumenthal
Looking at the chemistry of ancient biological material (teeth, bones, soils) helps scientists to tell what past environments were like. But have you ever wondered what it may look like when sampling fossil mammals? Check out this animated image by EOAS geochemists & paleoecologists!
What you are looking at now is the inside of a custom-built laser ablation chamber for tiny in-situ sampling of enamel for carbon and oxygen isotopes. The laser spots are 200-500 microns (µm; 10-6 m) in diameter. The little puff of dust from the tooth enamel being shot contains CO2 that records the diet and environment of the organism while it was living.
This work is being done by Dr. Kendra Chritz, Assistant Professor at the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, in collaboration with Dr. Scott Blumenthal, who is visiting UBC as a Research Associate currently, at the University of Oregon where this video was taken. "The goal of my research program is to understand the intimate ties between people and ecosystems across many different timescales using geochemistry, and how these environmental records provide the crucial data needed to understand the modern planet during the Anthropocene as we know it," says Dr. Chritz.
Inside the chamber, the scientists are sampling two very different sets of material. The first are middle-Holocene aged gerbil incisors extracted from a headdress made by a man 5,000 years ago. This is part of Dr. Chritz’s long-term collaborations and work on Kenyan prehistory and late Quaternary environmental change. The original excavation, as the New York Times reported, found that "most [people] were buried with ornamentation, including an infant who wore an ostrich eggshell bracelet. One man was buried with a headdress decorated with what researchers figured out were 400 carefully arranged gerbil teeth. He probably wore the headdress during life."
The second set of samples are teeth from multituberculates, our ancient mammalian ancestors, from the late Cretaceous. These particular rodent-sized mammals lived alongside dinosaurs. "We [Chritz and Blumenthal, along with PCIGR] are beginning a project with the Denver Museum of Natural History to explore how the diet and ecology of mammals changed following the K/Pg mass extinction, after which they evolved and created the mammal-driven world we live in today," says Dr. Chritz. This collaboration is building off of this project, also reported in the New York Times in 2019.
We also had a conversation with Dr. Chritz in our On Earth weekly podcast series: click here to learn more!
Volcanism drove rapid ocean deoxygenation during the time of the dinosaurs
Ocean deoxygenation during the Mesozoic Era was much more rapid than previous thought, with CO2 induced environmental warming creating ocean ‘dead zones’ over timescales of only tens of thousands of years.
The research from University of British Columbia (UBC) and University of Hong Kong (HKU) Earth scientists paints a new picture of severe ocean deoxygenation events in our planet’s geologic history.
“Physical drivers, in particular ocean warming linked to volcanic activity during the Cretaceous Period, played key roles in triggering and maintaining oceanic anoxia,” says lead researcher Dr. Kohen Bauer, who began the work while at UBC and completed the study with HKU’s Department of Earth Sciences.
“The same mechanisms are also critically important drivers of modern ocean deoxygenation and expanding marine dead zones. Today, in addition to volcanoes releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, humans are as well.”
Previous research tended to focus on the role ocean nutrient cycles played in causing so called ‘dead zones’—a process that would have driven ocean deoxygenation over much longer timescales of hundreds of thousands of years. However, it’s now clear that massive volcanism and its associated feedbacks was a more direct trigger for the rapid development of oceanic anoxia.
The research delved into the causes of Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a — an interval 120 million years ago when large swaths of Earth’s oceans became anoxic. Those conditions likely persisted for almost a million years, causing climate perturbations, and biotic turnover.
The scientists reconstructed the period’s environmental conditions using novel geochemical methods and ancient sediments deposited in both the paleo-Tethys and paleo-Pacific oceans.
“Mesozoic oceanic anoxic events are some of the most important analogs for unlocking lessons about warm-Earth climate states in the geological record,” says UBC’s Dr. Sean Crowe, author on the paper and Canada Research Chair in Geomicrobiology with UBC’s departments of Microbiology and Immunology, and Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences.
“These events provide enormous potential to help us better understand the sensitivity of the Earth system to perturbations in global biogeochemical cycles, marine biology, and climate on timescales relevant to humankind.”
The paper was published in the journal Geology.
Meet Dr. Stephanie Waterman: Physical Oceanographer
Stephanie is a sea-going physical oceanographer. She is interested in large-scale circulation and the ocean's role in the climate system and the inter-relationships between various components of the oceanic circulations at different times.
She approaches her research both through observational & theoretical perspectives. She uses targeted field observations, observational data analysis, idealized process modeling, analytical analysis & lab studies. Her main aim is to observe real-world systems, identify the important physical processes generating individual phenomena, and reduce their complexity to a model which is useful.
She’s specifically interested in:
- Arctic oceanography, and the mixing of different types of waters in that ocean
- Southern ocean dynamics
- The role of “eddy fluxes” in the western boundary
- Geophysical fluid dynamics
EOAS develops the Earth & Environmental Sciences BSc for University of Central Asia
Francis Jones, Lecturer (geophysics and geoscience education)
In June 2021, the first cohort of Earth and Environmental Sciences students graduated at the Khorog, Tajikistan campus of the brand new University of Central Asia (UCA). See a description of this historic celebration including links to recorded speeches, and a photo gallery of the event.
Why is this graduation in far-away Tajikistan so meaningful?
UCA is an incredible, ambitious academic development project initiated in 2000 in three adjacent Central Asian nations. It is led by the Aga Khan Development Network and involves over 75 international partnerships, including UBC. UCA’s mission is to promote social and economic development in Central Asian mountain communities by offering an internationally recognized standard of higher education while enabling the peoples of the region to preserve their rich cultural and environmental heritage as assets for the future.
Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains and students practice geoscience lab skills (photo: Francis Jones)
What’s the EOAS connection?
UCA came to EOAS to propose this partnership, we prepared the plan and budget, and then the team was hired, including UBC scientists and educational experts from EOAS, Geography, Physics, Chemistry, and Ecology. We are proud to have prepared all 22 core courses for this degree program. A project blog was kept while work progressed, and a presentation for International Mountain Day summarizes our goals and outcomes. The UBC Vice-Provost International also has a picture story entitled “From the ground up: helping build a new university’s undergrad program in Central Asia”.
In EOAS we worked with colleagues across disciplines and around the world to build courses for this mixed geography/geoscience BSc degree that are contextualized for mountainous Central Asia. Modern pedagogies were incorporated as UCA faculty all teach using evidence-based best practices. Therefore, we at UBC, and especially in EOAS, were particularly well-placed to contribute our experience in geoscience teaching, learning and educational development.
This remarkable project was a uniquely rewarding opportunity to learn about, and contribute towards the growth of higher education in mountainous Central Asia. So - congratulations to the first Earth and environmental scientists to graduate from the University of Central Asia! And thank you to all in EOAS, Geography, and beyond who contributed time, expertise and resources.
Watch the video to learn about the Earth and Environmental Sciences B.Sc. degree at UCA:
On Earth with Dr. Santa Ono - University President and Molecular Immunologist
Santa J. Ono, Ph.D., FRSC, FCAHS is the 15th President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of British Columbia. He also serves as Chair of the U15 Group of Universities, on the Board of Directors of Universities Canada, and as Past Chair of Research Universities of British Columbia. In 2018, he served as co-chair of the Tri-council advisory committee on equity, diversity and inclusion policy.
Prior to his appointment as President and Vice-Chancellor of UBC, Dr. Ono served as the 28th President of the University of Cincinnati and Senior Vice-Provost and Deputy to the Provost at Emory University. A molecular immunologist educated at the University of Chicago and McGill, Dr. Ono has taught at Johns Hopkins, Harvard University and University College London.
He holds Honorary Doctorates from Chiba University and the Vancouver School of Theology and is a recipient of the Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award from the American Council on Education, the Professional Achievement Award from University of Chicago, a Grand Challenges Hero Award from UCLA and the NAAAP 100 Award from the National Association of Asian American Professionals.
On Earth with Dr. Bonnie Henry - Public Health Officer
Dr. Bonnie Henry was appointed as British Columbia’s Provincial Health Officer in 2018 following three years as the Deputy Provincial Health Officer. As BC’s most senior public health official, Dr. Henry is responsible for monitoring the health of all British Colombians and undertaking measures for disease prevention and control and health protection. Most recently Dr. Henry has led the province’s response on the COVID-19 pandemic and drug overdose emergency. Dr. Henry’s experience in public health, preventive medicine and global pandemics has extended throughout her career. She served in a number of senior roles at the BC Centre for Disease Control and Toronto Public Health, including as the operational lead in the response to the SARS outbreak in Toronto. She has worked internationally with the WHO/UNICEF polio eradication program in Pakistan and with the WHO to control the Ebola outbreak in Uganda and has been actively involved in mass gathering health planning in Canada and internationally. She is a specialist in public health and preventive medicine and is board certified in preventive medicine in the U.S. She graduated from Dalhousie Medical School, completed a Masters in Public Health and residency training in preventive medicine at University of California, San Diego and in community medicine at University of Toronto. She is an associate professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia.