2025-2029
Project
Aquapal
Les premiers milieux modernes d’eau
douce et leurs marges.
Approche multi-échelle sur la diversité
et l’écologie des vertébrés et des
plantes autour de la limite K/Pg
(Crétacé et Paléogène)
Co-principal investigators
- Olga Otero
- Bernard Gomez et Philippe Sorrel (Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon)
- Romain Vullo (Géosciences Rennes)
- Xavier Valentin
Funding
AQUAPAL is a research project funded by the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region (2022–2027).
Aims
AQUAPAL is a project that addresses questions related to past biodiversity and its evolution across different temporal scales, particularly in the context of major environmental changes, from the Late Cretaceous (Albian–Cenomanian) to the Paleogene (up to the Early Eocene), across several French continental basins (Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Occitanie, and Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur regions).
Outcomes
This project has two complementary objectives:
- To describe and analyze the establishment of modern freshwater ecosystems at different spatial scales, including a more detailed study of reference sites in France, some of which have been recently discovered in Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
- To promote the value of sites from the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region and the collections derived from them through various outreach materials aimed at the general public and school audiences, highlighting the links between the region’s paleontological heritage and education/training on major current challenges related to biodiversity and climate change.
Consortium
The project builds on the scientific and technical expertise of members of the PALEVOPRIM laboratory (Géraldine Garcia, Olga Otero, and Xavier Valentin), as well as on their network of collaborators in France (notably through the ANR EDENs project, led by PI Rodolphe Tabuce, ISEM Montpellier) and internationally (particularly in Lebanon and Algeria, where we are involved in the study of exceptional sites for which the datasets have already been acquired). It is being developed within a broad network of partners, including non-profit organizations, museum institutions, and local authorities.
