Professor Rich Pancost

Research summary

OGU website

Proxies for Paleoclimate Reconstruction
Organic matter preserved in ancient marine, lacustrine, and peat deposits are vast repositories of information on Earth’s climate through time. Biomarkers provide insight into the organisms living in the past, and the environmental conditions necessary for such organisms to thrive can then be elucidated. Further information is provided by the isotopic compositions of such biomarkers. Because δ¹³C and δD values of biomass are governed by environmental conditions, compound-specific isotope proxies can be used to reconstruct ancient pCO₂ levels, rainfall, temperature, food web structure, and methane cycling. Our research focuses on ...

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Biography

In 1992, I obtained my B.S. degree in Geology (with high honors) from Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, USA) and began my Ph.D. research with Dr. Katherine Freeman at the Pennsylvania State University. There, I conducted research on environmental and physiological controls on the carbon isotopic composition of free and bound biomarker compounds in modern surface-water samples of the Peru upwelling region and ancient sediments of the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway (Cenomanian-Turonian boundary) and Taconic foreland basin (Late Ordovician). The common theme of these diverse studies was the development and application of compound-specific carbon isotope analysis as a ...

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Recent publications

• Badger, MPS, Schmidt, DN, Mackensen, A & Pancost, RD 2013, ‘High resolution alkenone palaeobarometry indicates relatively stable pCO₂ during the Pliocene (3.3 to 2.8 Ma)’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.
• Badger, MPS, Lear, C, Pancost, RD, Foster, G, Bailey, T, Leng, MJ & Abels, H 2013, ‘CO₂ drawdown following the middle Miocene expansion of the Antarctic Ice Sheet’. Paleoceanography, vol 28., pp. 42-53

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