Elizabeth Peneycad

CL Climate: Past, Present & Future

The 2017 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Elizabeth Peneycad for the poster/PICO entitled:

Coupling δ18O values of rodent tooth and mollusc shell carbonates: a new approach to reconstructing Pleistocene palaeotemperatures? (Peneycad, E.; Candy, I.; Schreve, D.;)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

I am a PhD student in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway University of London, UK, and am part of the London NERC Doctoral Training Partnership. My research is investigating how the stable isotope ratios of rodent teeth can be used to reconstruct past temperatures and environments during the Quaternary period in the UK.
The poster that I presented at EGU 2017 outlines the preliminary results of a new modern calibration linking the oxygen isotope ratios of rodent teeth and local meteoric water. This calibration is then applied to the reconstruction of past summer temperatures for two Pleistocene sites in the UK, using a novel approach that combines the oxygen isotope values of fossil rodent teeth and mollusc shell carbonates. The results demonstrate that this approach can generate accurate palaeotemperature reconstructions for the late Quaternary period.