Bernd R Schöne
Professor of Palaeontology / Sclerochronology
Prof Bernd Schöne is based in the Institute of Geosciences at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, where his research focuses on high-resolution environmental and climate reconstructions from mollusk shells.
During growth, bivalves record changes of environmental quantities in their shells in the form of variable increment widths, microstructure, and geochemical properties including stable isotopes and trace elements. Extremely long-lived bivalves are of particular interest for long-term paleoclimate studies, particularly in settings for which other high-resolution proxy records are not available. Based on similar growth patterns, contemporaneous shells with overlapping life spans can be strung together to form so-called master chronologies (similar to dendrochronology). Such chronologies reflect the environmental conditions that affected all specimens in a specific region.
Bernd is a Principal Investigator on the project and will work across the project on food-web reconstruction via bulk and compound-specific isotope analysis; climate and environmental reconstruction using ‘traditional’ stable isotopes of shell carbonate, trace and minor element properties of shell material, and shell microstructure; temporal contextualization: chronology construction (crossdating)
