The discovery of large accumulations of woolly mammoth remains together with Upper Palaeolithic artefacts has fascinated both researchers and the general public since the 19th century. Despite many years of scientific research and dispute our knowledge about these sites and the relationship between mammoths and contemporaneous Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers remains incomplete. This project focuses on the mammoth bone accumulations found in the West Carpathian forelands and seeks to establish why they formed and their function for hunter-gatherer groups 35,000-25,000 years ago – a period of major techno-cultural and environmental change in approaching the Last Glacial Maximum. For the first time we will study materials covering the full chronological range of this archaeological phenomenon, considering both existing collections alongside new fieldwork at the key sites of Dolní Věstonice I, Kraków Spadzista and Langmannersdorf. Site-specific signals of human-mammoth interaction within their local palaeoenvironmental context will be used to investigate chrono-spatial changes in both mammoth populations and hunter-gatherer societies. We will employ standardised field and laboratory protocols that utilise recent methodological and technological advances in ancient DNA research, stable isotope studies, radiometric dating, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and palaeodemographic modelling. The resulting dataset will allow an integrated investigation of the formation of mammoth bone accumulations and produce a statistically analysable dataset expected to reveal the interactions between human and mammoth populations in Central Europe in the context of palaeoenvironmental changes. This will have great impact not only for Upper Palaeolithic research in Central Europe, but will on a general scale also contribute to an improved understanding of human behaviour, cultural developments, and human adaptation to dynamically changing climatic and environmental conditions.

The role of impact cratering in the evolution of Earth’s geosphere and biosphere is greatly underappreciated in the field of modern geoscience. Although years of research on terrestrial impact craters have contributed greatly to our knowledge of impact cratering processes and products, the available geochronological data represents a major and fundamental gap in our knowledge. Of the ca. 190 confirmed impact craters on Earth only ca. 10 % are considered to be accurately and precisely dated. Consequently, the vast majority of terrestrial craters cannot be correlated with each other or with other geological events such as mass extinctions. Here we propose to take timely advantage of recent advances both in our understanding of how the mineral zircon (ZrSiO4) can record the age of an impact event and in the analytical techniques used to determine such U-Pb ages to significantly and efficiently grow our database of accurately and precisely dated terrestrial impact craters. Specifically, this project will focus on craters whose precise formation age may have broad implications for Earth’s history. Among others, these include the Siljan impact crater, Sweden, which has been proposed as a contributing factor to the late Devonian mass extinction event, one of the largest mass extinctions in the Phanerozoic, and the Suavjärvi impact crater, northwest Russia. The latter has a very poorly constrained age of between 2.7 and 2.2 Ga but is likely to be the oldest impact crater on Earth with confirmation of an impact age in this study. This innovative action will couple recent advances in microstructural characterisation of shocked zircon (EBSD analysis and Raman mapping) with cutting-edge U-Pb analytical techniques not previously applied to shocked grains (including high resolution, fully quantitative U-Pb age mapping by SIMS and high precision multiple step leaching CA-ID-TIMS) and establish efficient protocols for future dating of craters on Earth and other planetary bodies.

Previous studies on extinct Pleistocene megafauna attempted to decipher species’ responses to environmental change through genetic studies and palaeodietary reconstruction. However, none of these studies addressed the issue whether changes in palaeoecology represent evolutionary processes or are instead a result of environmentally induced plasticity. The present research project proposes novel ways of addressing the aforementioned question through an interdisciplinary approach including palaeogenomics, ancient epigenomics and palaeoecology. The project will focus on a case study of cave bear populations in the Romanian Carpathians, a key region of their distribution prior extinction showing the most dramatic dietary differentiation among cave bears across their entire geographical range. We will explore the response of Late Pleistocene cave bear populations to environmental heterogeneity, and determine the genetic and epigenetic processes that led to these differences in Romanian cave bears. To achieve this, we will carry out next-generation sequencing of cave bears from different time-related populations with various dietary patterns. This dataset will constitute the most complete cave bear genome dataset ever analysed, allowing us to gain an unprecedented understanding of cave bear evolutionary history and moving forward the field of evolutionary epigenomics. This project will provide new research avenues that the experienced researcher will be able to exploit in order to reach and reinforce a position of professional maturity and independence. The experienced researcher will also be trained in cutting edge scientific techniques and analyses, as well as a number of skills that are transferable between countries and sectors (including management, grant writing, communication and teaching), and that will facilitate her development into a research leader.

It has long been known that the biological activity of the oceans is regulated by the availability of the major nutrient ions phosphate, nitrate, and silicate. More recently, however, it has been recognized that micronutrient trace elements also play an important role in limiting marine productivity. As biological activity draws down CO2 from the atmosphere, micronutrients play a significant role in regulating the Earth's carbon cycle and climate. This study focuses on the micronutrient element cadmium (Cd). The geochemistry of Cd in seawater has attracted significant interest for more than 30 years because its marine distribution mimics the distribution of the macronutrient phosphate. This correlation forms the basis for the application of foraminiferal Cd/Ca ratios as a paleoclimate proxy. The application of this proxy is hindered, however, by our limited understanding of the role and cycling of bioactive Cd in the oceans. A recent pilot investigation of the PI indicates that analyses of Cd stable isotope compositions are able to address such limitations. In particular, the pilot study was the first investigation to identify large Cd isotope variations in seawater, which primarily reflect isotope fractionation from biological uptake of dissolved seawater Cd. The strikingly systematic nature of the fractionations, provide new insights into the marine cycling of Cd and demonstrate that Cd isotopes may be a useful paleoclimate proxy. The present study will build on and verify the results of the pilot investigation. To this end, we will first acquire a significantly larger Cd isotope dataset for seawater. We will then carefully evaluate this new dataset to re-examine the conclusion, that combined analyses of seawater Cd contents and isotope compositions uniquely inform on climate-relevant processes, such as variations in marine productivity. Whilst the interpretation of the new analytical data is expected to be straightforward, we will also address this goal by expanding a currently available global ocean model of Cd cycling to Cd isotopes. This approach will allow us to assess whether the model can reproduce reasonable Cd concentrations and isotope distributions for the oceans, based on known processes and fractionation factors. Any discrepancies between the model results and data will thus help to identify deficiencies in our understanding of the processes that regulate marine Cd contents and isotope compositions. A confirmation of the hypothesis that combined Cd concentration and isotope measurements provide unique constraints on the cycling of Cd and other nutrients in the oceans would be exciting. Such a result provides a basis for the application of Cd isotopes as a paleonutrient proxy in climate research. For example, combined Cd/Ca and Cd isotope data for foraminifera from sediment cores could be used to investigate temporal changes in marine nutrient utilization and the upwelling of nutrient-rich water masses. Such studies are important because they allow an assessment of past changes in the marine carbon cycle and their effect on climate.