TTE 04 Jaelyn Eberle
This episode is a conversation with Jaelyn Eberle, a mammal palaeontologist based at the University of Colorado but who works primarily in the Arctic. I worked with her just a few hundred miles from the North Pole on Ellesmere Island, in 2018 for Polar Extremes, a climate change special for NOVA on PBS in the States. I really enjoyed my time with Jaelyn and was fascinated by the environment she was reconstructing in the Arctic 50 million years ago, a strange, swampy forest, dark for 6 months of the year, but still home to turtles, crocodiles and tapirs. It’s an amazing insight to into just how different climates can be, on this planet we call home and it tells us a lot about what we might expect in the face of current climate change. The conversation covers the ancient landscape and animals, the amount of information carried in teeth, plus the modern Arctic environment and the challenges it faces. Jaelyn is an ever-cheerful and positive force in the field and I think she carries this into her communication and passion for teaching. This conversation was recorded on 16th April, right at the height of the Coronavirus Crisis, so there are references to those events. There has been a delay as I built up all 8 episodes of Series 1, which are now recorded and ready to launch.