Third paper - Earliest-known evidence for anthropogenic pollution on the wildlife

Dear friends,

We hope you started this new year vigorously.

The team is whishing you all the best for 2025 and stay close as INTEGRATE has many interesting information to share in the near future!

We are thrilled to announce the publishing of our new study “Earliest evidence for heavy metal pollution on wildlife in Middle Age Europe” published by Environmental Pollution Journal of Elsevier (Impact Factor: 7.6; Q1).

This study was led by dr. Marius Robu (ERIS) and dr. Jeremy E. Martin (ENSL), part of a Franco-Romanian team ‒ dr. Ionuț-Cornel Mirea, dr. Daniel Vereș, dr. Marius Vlaicu, dr. Sebastien Olive and Philippe Telouk.

We investigated trace element incorporation in the dentition of a 1000 BP-year-old brown bear from the Romanian Carpathians, an area known historically for strong metallurgical activities. Background values as well as unnatural high lead (Pb), lithium (Li) and zinc (Zn) levels in a circa 5‒6-year-old brown bear male were detected using trace element maps across its functional dentition. High-resolution elemental transects and histological sections revealed the seasonal extent of lead intake, which occurred during five recorded summers, i.e. when the animal was actively foraging. We interpreted the elevated Pb, Li and Zn concentrations in the terminal growth lines as evidence for the earliest-known anthropogenic heavy metal pollution in a wild animal. Our study underlines the impact of early industrial activities in a large terrestrial omnivore, demonstrating that anthropogenic threats on wildlife were not solely driven by hunting or landscape modification during the most recent decades.

Full story here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749125001393

This is another evocative example of how two teams, from different countries of the European Union joined together their resources and started a successful story of scientific collaboration.

We would like to thank to the Speo Alpin MH and Focul Viu speleo clubs for assisting us while sampling and for permission to studying the cave map. JEM and PT thank ENS de Lyon and CNRS INSU for supporting our research. All the analysis of this study was made possi ble by the INSU/CNRS MC-ICP-MS national facility at ENS-Lyon. We thank the staff at Elemental Scientific Lasers for providing a laser and technical support as part of the formal collaboration with ENS-Lyon. We thank W.Chu, J. Longman and F. Rivals for providing comments on an early version of this work. The authors are indebted to the two anonymous reviewers for improving our manuscript.

So long!