Speaker
Description
Our planet has a long hidden and fascinating history that can be revealed by rocks and fossils. These are the only direct window into the history of life on planet Earth. This lost past can be retold by a thorough investigation of its remaining evidence by techniques and methods with underlaying Physics principles. This constitutes an interdisciplinary branch of science called Palaeometry. This area has benefited from technological development, with successful partnerships between earth scientists and physicists that have resulted in the development of new methods. This talk aims to present an overview of the application of a wide variety of techniques to interesting palaeontological problems, with focus on recent examples by the Palaeometry group from the Laboratory of Archaeometry and Sciences Applied to Cultural Heritage (LACAPC), together with the Laboratory of Material Analysis with Ion Beams (LAMFI), both from the Institute
of Physics of the University of São Paulo (IF-USP). The covered techniques will include accelerator-based techniques (μXRF, μXANES, IBIL, PIXE), Raman spectroscopy (RS), dual-beam electron microscopy, digital radiography, and multiband photography. The combined and complementary use of such techniques and data processing methods are paramount to overcome their limitations, in general enabling the understanding of the processes that form and alter primary biological signals on the geological record. The potential of the studies will be covered as well.
[FAPESP 2021/07007-7, 2022/06485-5, 2023/14250-0, 2023/17293-2, 2025/02782-3, and 2023/04501-6; CNPq 131500/2023-6].
