Visiting Speaker - Dr. Rachel Schwartz-Narbonne

Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering Distinguished Speaker Program presents Dr. Rachel Schwartz-Narbonne

On Friday, April 21, Dr Rachel Schwartz-Narbonne, PhD, MRSC, FHEA, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at Sheffield-Hallam University in the UK, will be giving a talk for the Queen's Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering.

Talk Title: "Reframing the Mammoth Steppe: Isotopic Insights on Pleistocene Megafauna"

Date: Friday, April 21

Time: 1:30pm

Location: Miller Hall, Room 201

Coffee and treats will be served.

Abstract: 

The Pleistocene mammoth steppe was a megacontinental ecosystem that spanned northern Eurasia and northwestern North America where diverse species of megafauna co-existed (e.g. woolly mammoth; Mammuthus primigenius, horse; Equus spp., and bison; Bison spp.). Understanding the species’ individual dietary niches, and how those changed with environmental shifts and interactions between species, is essential to revealing how this complex ecosystem was maintained, and what contributed to its extinction. A metastudy of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopic compositions of collagen revealed dietary niche overlap between megaherbivores. Compound-specific stable isotopic studies of amino acids can be used to separate dietary niches from metabolic effects. These were used to solve the “woolly mammoth conundrum”, revealing that the woolly mammoth consumed a distinct diet from other mammoth-steppe herbivores. Comparison of these amino acids isotopic compositions to modern herbivores such as elephants hold potential to reveal further information about the diets of mammoth steppe megafauna.  

 

Bio:

Dr. Rachel Schwartz-Narbonne is interested in a wide range of environmental chemistry.  Her first academic job was working on boron and lithium isotopes as a summer student in the Queen's Faculty for Isotope Research (QFIR) and during her undergraduate at the University of Ottawa (Canada) she worked on green chemistry methods to produce nanoparticles.  From there she went on to a PhD at the University of Western Ontario (Canada) where she used carbon and nitrogen isotopes to understand the ecology of Pleistocene megafauna. Her post-doc at Newcastle University (UK) used lipid biomarkers to investigate the nitrogen cycle through time, from the present going back to the Jurassic. Dr. Rachel Schwartz-Narbonne is currently a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at Sheffield Hallam University (UK), where she is bringing her love of the environment and chemistry background to teaching a range of bioscience and chemistry classes, as well as to her research career using microbial lipid biomarkers to study wastewater and community science to study the effects of soil pollution on microbial communities.