Geotop Uqam-Mcgill Chibougamau
Research in Chibougamau

In recent years, new geochemical proxies and emerging technologies have been combined to explore novel paleoclimatic questions that were only dreamed of during Emiliani's graduate years at the University of Chicago. These data confirm many of the fundamental geochemical relationships used by researchers to reconstruct ocean temperatures and water geochemistry from the fossil record. I will present data from laboratory experiments with living planktonic foraminifera that have allowed us to calibrate these proxies and reduce the spatial resolution of geochemical analyses to the micron and sub-micron level. In this presentation I will discuss how the application of new technologies such as laser ablation ICP-MS, SIMS and nanoSIMS can be used to address old and new paleoceanographic problems. When individual foraminifera from a fossil assemblage are analyzed using LA-ICP-MS and coupled to oxygen isotope measurements from standard isotope ratios mass spectrometry, we may be able to extract novel information from the fossil record that was not previously possible.