Who should attend?
Anyone working on or interested in the formation and interpretation of growth patterns in accretionary hard parts of invertebrate and vertebrate organisms as well as coralline red algae, their geochemistry and crystal fabrics or the underlying processes of biomineralization, should attend this conference. We also highly welcome contributions from people working with tree rings, speleothems and related bio- and geoarchives. Come to Mainz, share your thoughts and help to bring this fast-developing field forward!
Dendrochronology revolutionized our understanding of the timing and nature of past environmental change. Coral sclerochronology expanded and refined this understanding by contributing data from low latitude marine settings. Now studies of other mineralized organisms are set to provide information from mid and high latitudes (both in the marine and terrestrial realms), facilitating comprehensive, integrated reconstruction of environmental history. The new data, commonly but not exclusively derived from corals, fish otoliths, mollusks, are often of very high temporal resolution, providing a record of change over timescales from years to as little as hours. Being based on biomineralized materials the techniques involved are applicable to studies in deep time as well as the more recent past. Sclerochronology has already made a significant contribution to our knowledge of past climate change: there is immense scope for further work and for research integrated with approaches involving other 'banded' records (tree rings, teeth, bones, speleothems, varves etc.). As well as to climate change, sclerochronology is being applied in pollution monitoring, studies of life history traits, ecophysiology, diet, mobility and diverse other contexts.