South African Extinctions and Seasonality: Insights from the Isotopic Composition of Herbivore Teeth
By:
Alexandra Norwood
Date:
Tue, 10/06/2025 - 18:00
Branch:
Western Cape
Note: This talk will be livestreamed on our YouTube channel. There are 30 places available to attend the talk in person at Bonne Esperance Guest House, 238 Queens Road, Simon's Town.
Please RSVP to Jenna Lavin (jenna.lavin@gmail.com) if you'd like to join us in person.
Charge: Free for members | R40 for non-members | R20 for student non-members
About the Talk:
This project has two focuses: first, on generating novel approaches to the analysis of enamel isotope data, so that rainfall seasonality data (the timing and amount of rainfall during the year) can be recovered from the fossil record. And second, on reconstructing paleo-seasonality across southern Africa to understand how changing seasonality may have altered ecosystems in ways that have not been detected in other paleoenvironmental proxies and contributed to extinction in the late Quaternary.
Bio:
Dr. Alexandra Norwood is a paleoecologist whose research is broadly concerned with how climate change drove human evolution. She uses a variety of paleoenvironmental proxies to understand the relationship between climate and terrestrial ecosystems in the past, with a strong emphasis on biogeochemistry and the stable isotope analysis of faunal teeth from paleontological and archaeological sites. Alex’s work is concerned with both modern ecology and isotope systems and using isotope data to provide insight into the environmental contexts of important inflection points in the paleoanthropological record, like the emergence of new hominin taxa or technological suites. Alex is currently a National Science Foundation Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Utah, working on a project investigating drivers of megafaunal extinction in the late Quaternary in southern Africa.
Please RSVP to Jenna Lavin (jenna.lavin@gmail.com) if you'd like to join us in person.
Charge: Free for members | R40 for non-members | R20 for student non-members
About the Talk:
This project has two focuses: first, on generating novel approaches to the analysis of enamel isotope data, so that rainfall seasonality data (the timing and amount of rainfall during the year) can be recovered from the fossil record. And second, on reconstructing paleo-seasonality across southern Africa to understand how changing seasonality may have altered ecosystems in ways that have not been detected in other paleoenvironmental proxies and contributed to extinction in the late Quaternary.
Bio:
Dr. Alexandra Norwood is a paleoecologist whose research is broadly concerned with how climate change drove human evolution. She uses a variety of paleoenvironmental proxies to understand the relationship between climate and terrestrial ecosystems in the past, with a strong emphasis on biogeochemistry and the stable isotope analysis of faunal teeth from paleontological and archaeological sites. Alex’s work is concerned with both modern ecology and isotope systems and using isotope data to provide insight into the environmental contexts of important inflection points in the paleoanthropological record, like the emergence of new hominin taxa or technological suites. Alex is currently a National Science Foundation Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Utah, working on a project investigating drivers of megafaunal extinction in the late Quaternary in southern Africa.