Sarah Gabbott

I am fascinated in the biology and ecology of ancient organisms and ancestors – the story of life on Earth as read through the fossil record. I document and analyse the processes and patterns of the evolution, and the interactions between the biosphere and environment.

More recently I have employed the approaches and methods of palaeontology to bear on analysis and understanding of contemporary and future biosphere change, particularly relating to pollution of the environment by the actions of humans. I am especially interested in freshwater systems and have developed novel concepts to understand the cradle to grave journey of plastic materials – how they are cycled, transported, degraded and buried over short, medium and long timescales.

As a palaeobiologist I have focussed mostly on exceptionally preserved fossils, where remarkably the organic features of animals, which usually perish rapidly after death, have been transformed through a variety of processes to become geologically stable materials – faithfully recording long-extinct animal anatomy. From these fossils we can gain a much more detailed and comprehensive picture of ancient life, but first we must “read” them correctly. This can be challenging because during their formation processes such as transport, decay and sediment interactions have altered the physical and chemical state of the animal carcass compared to that of the fossil. Knowing how this occurs and when is critical to interpreting such fossils.

I use a variety of analytical techniques and novel laboratory decay experiments to understand the transformation of animal remains during fossilization. But also, to extract useful information from fossils we must take a holistic approach and understand not only how they formed, but where the animals lived and where the fossilization process occurred. To do this I undertake detailed investigation of the sediments in which fossils (or other organic matter) is found including looking at details of texture and chemistry to unravel the depositional process and environment.

More recently, as well as working on organic material that was once living, and is prone to decay, I have been applying my expertise to more durable and man-made organic compounds, such as plastic. In all this work I combine the design of laboratory experiments to model physical and chemical transformations, with data collected from real world samples to gain maximum understanding of how processes lead to preservation, or to loss, of originally organic material.