It is excellent to see a new AMS radiocarbon dating set-up in New Zealand (NZ scientists fire up $3.4 million mass spectrometer).  When I was working on climate reconstruction I was hugely reliant on the previous 14C (radiocarbon) device to help put Before Present (BP) ages on volcanic ash layers (tephra) that occurred in sections and cores for my PhD and post-doc – we did this by collecting peat samples that were in direct contact with the tephra layers and submitting the peat samples for analysis.
The numerous volcanic eruptions in New Zealand over the past one million years, and particularly over the last 50,000 years within the Auckland Volcanic Field, mean that by using AMS dates (in conjunction with other radioactive dating methods) we have been able to date accurately each volcanic eruption. Because there are so many eruptions and each is chemically different (generally speaking), we can age-correlate sites over wide geographical areas.

By also reconstructing climate using methods such as pollen analysis and particle analysis (to reconstruct vegetation and environmental conditions), we have been able to reconstruct climate change over, for example, the last 1.1 million years for many areas in New Zealand, particularly the North Island. We have also been able to say how volcanic activity affected the local vegetation in the time immediately after the eruption.  That clearly has implications for future planning and mitigation procedures for future eruptions.

The palaeoclimate records that have been established in New Zealand are world-class, partly because of our volcanic history but also in large part to the presence of a radiocarbon dating facility actually being in New Zealand – long may it last.

[Example literature: Sandiford et al, 2003. A 28,000-7,600 cal yr BP pollen record of vegetation and climate change from Pukaki Crater, northern New Zealand. Palaegeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 201, pp. 235-247]

One of my work-heads is as a Palynologist, which means I study pollen, spores and other microscopic material that remain in sediments after they’ve been chemically treated to remove extraneous material.  For forensic work, we might be limited to sediment scraped from the knee of a pair of trousers or perhaps pollen collected from the heads of cannabis plants, but any sort of sediment can be examined for pollen.
For geological/archaeological samples, lake sediments and peats are the best in terms of preservation state, abundance and variety.  It is therefore extremely heartening to see that palynology has been able to help in determining the extinction mechanism of mammoths and other large mammals during the last Ice Age, which ended approximately 10,000 years ago (depending on one’s global location) – see Mammoth dung unravels extinction. The study indicates a gradual decline in large mammal numbers, not a catastrophic extinction a la the dinosaurs at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary 65 million years ago.
Scientifically, it’s an interesting study but from a general perspective I still find it strange that people are surprised that the large mammals are probably more than just a pretty addition to an African landscape but have actually been significant in it’s development. I’m pretty sure David Attenborough’s known that for years.
It’s also reassuring that analysing excrement can add so much information to our knowledge – an archaeologist I know has spent years analysing coprolites from Maori sites. It’s fascinating what we can learn from pooh.

If anyone had any doubts about the use or application of forensic palynology then surely they should be dispelled by now.  Work completed by Dr Dallas Mildenhall, based here in sunny New Zealand, helped Interpol arrest and charge three Chinese man in relation to production and distribution of counterfeit drugs.  The pollen content of samples of counterfeit drugs was examined.  The results indicated that the drugs had been exposed to pollen in southern China, which helped Interpol focus their search on particular Chinese individuals ‘of interest’.  Forensic palynology: top!