Geo Talkies

Science in Action (Part 3) 🦭😅🌊
Fieldwork isn’t always predictable—sometimes nature pushes back.

During one of our dives, a sea lion (with backup from the whole family!) got a little too curious—and ended up chasing off our diver. One of the coring tubes was lost to the sea floor forever. You can even see the dramatic entry in the field notebook. And sea lions sunbathing —completely unbothered. They’re used to hanging around fishing boats, often hoping for a snack.

Science in Action (Part 1) 🌊🛶☀️
From November to January, I swapped the French winter for Peruvian summer—joining an international team from France, Peru, and Brazil to sample sediment cores in Paracas Bay.

Our days started at sunrise, heading out by boat to retrieve these precious records of the past. Fieldwork meant multitasking under pressure, adapting to new ways of working, and learning from the diverse perspectives. It’s a reminder that science isn’t just about data—it’s deeply human.

Now, back in the lab, we’re analyzing tiny foraminifera fossils preserved in the sediments to reconstruct 2,500 years of climate history. These microfossils hold clues to how the ocean and atmosphere have changed—and what that might mean for our planet’s future.

How James Hutton paved the way for Darwin’s work

Exciting news! In addition to paleontology, we’re diving into the fascinating world of geochemistry. Please join me in welcoming our new Geotalker, João Barreira, currently pursuing his PostDoc at LPG, Angers. He completed his PhD in Brazil while collaborating with IFREMER in France.

Fossil bias: How unequal access shapes our understanding of past biodiversity

The second photo is taken from Raja and Dunne et al., 2022. The full article is open-access, with its front page shown in the third image.

Foraminifera under Epifluorescence

Foraminifera after ingesting Cell Tracker Green (CTG), seen under an epifluorescent microscope. CTG highlights living cells with a bright green glow, helping scientists easily distinguish between live and dead individuals.

Eggs of river and floods😊

In Swat (Pakistan) there is a saying ‘’ Never build houses near river to the point until which you see pebbles brought by river. These pebbles are eggs of river and she will come back to get them”
But unfortunately people don’t pay attention and building houses on flood plains is a common practice that results in 1000 of deaths every year during flood.

Mud cracks of Early Jurassic (~200 million years old) (Trans-Indus Range Pakistan).
And in the middle is the teacher (Dr. Suleman Khan) who made me fall in love with geology.

Photo credit: Mubashir Alee Eusafxai

How trees stabilize soil😯
A drawing of the root structure of a pine/fir tree. This is why recently burned land is so unstable once the trees are gone and stop actively stabilizing the soil and simply rot in place. So delicate of a structure.
Imagine what the subsurface root structuring looks like in an active forest or prairie land.
Kind of mind boggling how important plants are to soil development and their loss to soil erosion.

All of those roots are storing carbon—like crazy. "The Earth’s soils contain about 2,500 gigatons of carbon—that’s more than three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and four times the amount stored in all living plants and animals." https://lnkd.in/emw6wJKf

The world's soils are the best we have— is one of the best ways to tap its potential.

Source: https://lnkd.in/ggweEg8v
Miklós Veszprémi, Barbra Ransom

Image from Wageningen University & Research, https://lnkd.in/eciWgBNm Thanks Danijel Višević!

Poor algae 🥲

Columbus never saw North America

Native Americans had been living on the continent for about 11,000 years, and the Norwegian Vikings had made about two dozen visits to a functioning colony on the continent 500 years before Columbus’s noisy arrival, yet Columbus gets the credit. Why? Because his interesting souvenirs, exaggerated stories, inaccurate charts, and promises of vast wealth excited the imagination of royal courts. Columbus made North America a media event without ever sighting it! Columbus wasn’t trying to discover new lands. His intention was to pioneer a sea route to the rich and fabled lands of the East, made famous more than 200 years earlier in the overland travels of Marco Polo. As “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” Columbus was to have a fi nancial interest in the trade routes he blazed. He was familiar with Prince Henry’s work and, like all other competent contemporary navigators, knew Earth was spherical. He believed that by sailing west, he could come close to his eastern destination, whose latitude he thought he knew. Because of wishful thinking and dependence on Ptolemy’s data, however, Columbus made the smallest estimate of Earth’s size by any navigator in modern history. He assumed Earth to be only about half its actual size! Not surprisingly, Columbus mistook the New World for his goal of India or Japan. He thought that the notable absence of wealthy cities and well-dressed inhabitants resulted from striking the coast too far north or south of his desired latitude. He made three more trips to the New World but went to his grave believing that he had found islands off the coast of Asia. He never saw the mainland of North America and never realized the size and configuration of the continents the future of which he had so profoundly changed.

Credit: Tom Garrison (Essentials of Oceanography)

Can you find the pollens in these photos?

Thank you Mirka for sharing the photos.