The PhD fellow will be part of a multi-disciplinary, international research team working on the project EvoCave: Investigating 122 000 years of high-latitude faunal diversity using palaeozoology, archaeology, palaeoecology and ancient DNA funded by the Research Council of Norway. In this project we will excavate and analyse sediments and fossil remains from a cave deposit in northern Norway. This cave provides a rare opportunity for the comparative, interdisciplinary analyses of a high-latitude ecosystem throughout the last interglacial-glacial cycle. Exploratory excavations have discovered an extraordinarily rich fossil assemblage from a range of Arctic and boreal fauna. The postdoctoral fellow will join a strong, international team of scientists from the fields of evolutionary biology, palaeozoology, geology, geochronology, archaeology, aDNA and genomics.
The project will evaluate hypotheses on the northern limits of boreal ecosystems, mammals and humans in the Arctic and their responses to dramatic shifts in climate during a pre-industrial epoch. Two major excavations will take place (September 2021 and late summer 2022). The PhD fellow will focus on the palaeoecology of vertebrate fauna during the last 122 ka years and evaluate hypotheses on the evolutionary history and glacial survival of key Arctic and boreal species using aDNA. All data will be interpreted within the interdisciplinary framework of the project in collaboration with the project team. The PhD will work closely with a Postdoctoral fellow who focuses on quaternary geology and palaeoecology.
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