Thibaut Caley

Revealing South-East African past climate, its link to sedimentary fluxes and Hominid evolution

PostDoctoral Fellow: Dr Thibaut Caley
Scientific Sponsors: Stephan Jorry (GM-Ifremer)
LabexMER Research Axis 4: Sediment transfer from the coast to the abyss.

The past million years of Earth’s history are of interest for multiple reasons. Major changes to the climate system occurred at that time, as did a number of major steps in the hominid evolution. South East Africa is a critical region in this respect but remain largely unknown in terms of long-term climate dynamics, its impact on sedimentary fluxes at the terrestrial-coastal interface and Hominid evolution.

Using multiproxy approach on a marine sediment core (MD96-2048) off the Limpopo river (in particular stable isotopic measurements on inorganic and organic materials) together with a numerical climate model that include stable isotopes (iLOVECLIM), the project aims at understand the climate of South East Africa, its relationship with marine conditions, sedimentary fluxes and the development of Hominid.

Figure 1 :A section of the marine sediment core MD96-2048 (Thibaut CALEY).

 Figure 2 : Lipid (n-alkanes) of terrestrial plants contained in the marine sediment on which stable carbon isotopic composition is measured (Thibaut CALEY).

Figure 3 : Schematic representation of the climate model iLOVECLIM (Didier Roche, copyright cc-by-sa).