Natasha BarboliniResearcher

About me

I am a palaeoecologist who uses the fossil pollen record to investigate past global change. My two key aims are: 1) improving our understanding of biodiversity responses to environmental change, and 2) identifying suitable analogues for Earth’s climatic future, to improve model capabilities of ecosystem dynamics.

For my PhD in South Africa, I developed a new, age-constrained palynostratigraphy for the fossil-rich Karoo Basin, linking late Palaeozoic–Mesozoic terrestrial biozones to the International Geological Timescale. During my postdoc at the University of Amsterdam, I combined high-resolution records of Asian fossil pollen, temperature and biological diversity to reconstruct ecosystem responses to global cooling 34 million years ago. I also began developing novel experimental approaches in chemical palaeobotany: an emerging field characterising the chemical composition of organic plant remains.

This line of research led to a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship at the University of Bergen, where I used chemical signatures of fossil pollen as a proxy for UV radiation over the Permo-Triassic mass extinction. At Stockholm University, I continue developing this proxy for my VR-funded project on mountains as biotic refugia, using a one-million-year record recently drilled on the Tibetan Plateau by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP).