More...preparations

Foto 1. Marius cutting the cave bear mandibles for Ca analyses

Foto 2. Gabriela is databasing the mandibles to be taken to Terra Analitic lab in Alba-Iulia

Foto 3. Finishing to cut the cave bear mandibles

Foto 4 and 5. Terra Analitic lab. The spectrometer and the elemental analyzer to be used for INTEGRATE’s samples.

INTEGRATE is firing its engines intensely and we are very excited about the work and its future results!

First, we selected 100 cave bear mandibles, right side, from Urșilor, Oase, Muierilor, and Cioclovina caves and other several sites and took them to Alba-Iulia for stable isotope analysis. Basically, we’ll analyze the oxygen (δ18O from carbonate and phosphate matrixes) and the carbon (δ13C) of the bone apatite to infer the palaeoecology and environment of the Romanian Carpathian Late Pleistocene bears. The stable isotope lab, Terra Analitic, where our samples will undergo the analyses, is conducted by Montana Cristina Pușcaș, an old collaborator of ours, a skilled and very well-trained scientist in geochemistry. Moreover, Montana accepted our invitation to become a collaborator in INTEGRATE project. Soon, they will launch the lab’s website and we’ll be more than happy to introduce it to our audience.

Meanwhile, Andra and Gabriela worked on osteometry and constantly updated the database with various information and new specimens, Luchiana worked on the website and some new webpages for our colleagues, and Ionuț prepared the drafts for approval for working in several caves next year, and he documented samples of cave bears and associated species for radiocarbon dating and other analyses.

More than 100 cave bear mandibles were cut for Ca analyses that will be performed during October, at Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon Terre Planètes Environnement of the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, at the invitation of our dear collaborator, Dr. Jeremy Martin, researcher at CNRS. More about this, in the next post of this blog.

See you soon!