Paleodetectives! Bringing paleoecology to schools

Last month, Javi and Judit visited the school IE Rec Comtal (Barcelona) to run a hands‑on activity for high school students as part of the Ciència al Barri (Science in the neighbourhood) initiative. Ciència al Barri is a CSIC outreach programme that brings scientists into schools across Barcelona, Seville and Madrid, offering students the chance to explore the scientific method through engaging, researcher-led activities in multiple formats.

Through a real-case study from the Azores archipelago (Raposeiro et al., 2021), the students worked as “detectives of the past” and tried to reconstruct the first arrival of humans to Corvo Island by examining fossil pollen, macro-charcoal remains, and analysing coprostanol and biogeochemical signals. Their goal was to answer the question: When did the first humans arrive in the Azores? They were encouraged to question the history books, which traditionally claim that the Portuguese were the first to reach the archipelago. In the end, their findings challenged this narrative, revealing evidence of an earlier arrival.

Students explored how scientists interpret ecological dynamics across temporal scales, and how islands can provide an ideal study system for detecting the onset and magnitude of human‑induced environmental change.

We received very positive feedback from both the students and their teacher, and we would love to continue offering this activity to other schools. We hope that more of them will contact us, as we strongly believe that bringing science into schools is essential to encourage students to get involved in scientific disciplines and, of course, in paleoecology.

Authors

Javier de la Casa, PhD candidate

Judit Rodrigo, PhD student

Cited literature

Raposeiro, P. M., Hernández, A., Pla-Rabes, S., Gonçalves, V., Bao, R., Sáez, A., ... & Giralt, S. (2021). Climate change facilitated the early colonization of the Azores Archipelago during medieval times. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(41), e2108236118.