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# Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Scientist-Detectives: Sleuthing the  Past, Projecting the Future

As savvy as Sherlock was, his insights pale compared to the  ingenious techniques used by paleoscientists in reconstructing past  environmental conditions. Drs. Rusty Low and Carole Mandryk presented these  techniques in an interactive webinar showing how fossils, rocks and chemical  information (the so-called biogeochemical proxy data) evidence Earth system  processes on time scales that even Sherlock didn't know to exist. By the end of  the webinar, Dr. Low and Dr. Mandryk made evident that the patterns of  contemporary climate change we see today can't be understood without the  backstory provided by paleoclimate research. 

Drs. Low and Mandryk bonded while in grad school, looking  through microscopes at fossil pollen grains in the paleoenvironmental laboratory  at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.    Dr. Low was examining evidence for the peopling of the New World through  the ice-free corridor at the end of the most recent ice age (Pleistocene), and Dr.  Mandryk was looking at pollen from a Neanderthal cave in South Germany that was  supposed to end in a reconstruction of warm and cool intervals during the last  ice age

Dr. Low is a lead instructor and Associate Professor,  Masters of Applied Science Program, Specialization in Science for Educators, University  of Nebraska, and a senior Earth Scientist for the Institute for Global  Environmental Strategies. She was a graduate fellow in the Paleorecords of  Global Change program, University of Minnesota, where she earned her Ph.D. in  2001.  She is a mom of two kids, Shelby  and Max, who endured fieldwork with their parents in Europe and SW Asia.  

Dr. Carole Mandryk served as an associate professor at  Harvard and University of Hawaii before establishing 3C2E, a climate change  research, education and evaluation firm in Boulder, Colorado.  She is a mom of two boys, Nicholas and  Zachary, who also spent quality parent-child time in geological field camps as  kids.

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**Last updated:**   10/28/21**Author:** NOAAHow to cite this article

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