Currently a Ph.D. student at Karl-Franzens University (Graz-Austria) and Lund University (Sweden), I'm working on the lowest occurrence of the coccolithophorids and the evolution of the calcareous nannofossils during the Upper Triassic.  

This project is designed to better understand the timing of the emergence of planktonic calcification and its influence on seawater geochemistry. To reach these goals, a multi-disciplinary and multi-proxies approach is developed. The project combines paleontological studies of the calcareous nannoplankton, geochemistry on traditional (Ccarb, Corg) and non-traditional isotope system (Ca, Sr) and climate models. The final goal of this project is to better constrain the effect of the emergence of the modern biological pump on the atmospheric pCO2 and thus better estimate the impact of the calcifying plankton on the climate.

In my research, by investigating sections from the Austrian Alps (Paleolatitude – 30°N), Turkey (Paleo-equator) and Oman (Paleolatitude – 20°S), we aim to better define the timing, the amplitude and the regional extent of the pelagic calcifiers’ emergence and its impact on the oceanic chemistry during the Late Triassic. Our first interest is to verify the lowest occurrence (LO) of coccolithophorids at Steinbergkogel and the second is to perform a quantitative estimation of the volume and paleo-fluxes of the calcareous nannofossils during this bio-event; such estimation was so far only made for the Italian basins.