The Paper Trail

Decoding the Chalk seas using a paleontological approach

Henk Kombrink Season 1 Episode 10

The Maastricht area in the Netherlands is famous for its Upper Cretaceous Chalk deposits. In this podcast, Iris Vancoppenolle tells the story about her research project during which she tried to find evidence of an extinction event in the fossil record using samples from two Chalk quarries near Maastricht. However, instead of being able to pinpoint the event, which probably wasn't recorded in the shallow Chalk seas at the time, her dataset allowed her to make some interesting inferences on circulation of nutrients and the associated paleogeographic setting.