News

August 2025

Katja Bohm participated in the "International Workshop on Tibetan Uplift, Asian Aridification, and the Climate System" that took place in Lanzhou University, Gansu, China on August 15-18.

July 2025

Anu joined Juha Saarinen and Suvi Viranta for an intensive and fruitful field season in Orce, continuing investigations into the crucial question of Europe’s earliest human occupation (Project ORCEpluSZ; ().

Áquila Mesquita, along with an international team, conducted a field work season from July 6 to 20, 2025, in the Eastern Pyrenees, Spain. The team included collaborators Giorgio Basilici (State University of Campinas, Brazil) and Juraj Janočko (Technical University of Košice, Slovakia). The main objective was to collect sedimentological data from fluvial deposits of the Esplugafreda and Claret Formations (Tremp Group) to understand the palaeohydrological evolution of the fluvial landscape during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

June 2025

Piritta and Anu travelled to VU University Amsterdam for a project meeting as part of Piritta’s PhD research.

March 2025

Anu travelled to Georgia for a focused week of fieldwork in Orozmani. This field season was made possible thanks to funding from the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.

Great news! Anu together with Juha Saarinen and Miikka Tallavaara have been awarded a grant from the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters (Sohlberg Fund) to support fieldwork and research in Orozmani, Georgia.

Áquila, Piritta, Jie and Anu took part in the GeoDays conference in Oulu, where they each gave presentations.

Katja received the Geological Society of Finland’s Dissertation Prize for the best doctoral thesis in the field of geology in 2023-2024. Congratulations!

December 2024

Anu and Heikki Seppä visited Tunisia to attend an international meeting in Tozeur and to collect provenance samples from Saharan sands. A big thanks to prof. , University of Monastir for welcoming us and making the visit successful.

Katja received a two year funding for her postdoc project "Atmospheric mineral dust properties and provenance in East Asia: new perspectives on past and present dust-climate interactions" from the Finnish Cultural Foundation via The Finnish Foundations’ Post Doc Pool. Congratulations! For the project, Katja will join the at the University of Milano-Bicocca in 2025-2027.

Piritta presented her work in the AGU Annual Meeting 2024 in Washington D.C., USA

November 2024

We’re delighted to welcome Jie Zhang (the East China Normal University, Shanghai), who has joined the Department for a one-year exchange. Welcome aboard, Jie!

October – November 2024

Piritta’s third Cotutelle visit to VU. This time Piritta focused on dynamic image analysis of the samples collected from Nihewan in 2023.

October 2024

Anu, Liu Liping and Juha Pekka Lunkka visit Nanjing University. The exchange visit included presentations, fruitful discussions, and fieldwork in Weihe and Lushi Basins, investigating Eocene-Oligocene sedimentary deposits. This trip was made possible with support from the Research Council of Finland (bilateral exchange grant), and we are very grateful to prof. Lu Huayu, prof. Hanzhi Zhang, and their colleagues for hosting us.

September 2024

Áquila Ferreira Mesquita joined our group. Áquila is a sedimentologist exploring how terrestrial systems responded to the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum. We’re very happy to have him with us — welcome, Áquila!

July 2024

Anu, Juha Saarinen and Suvi Viranta go for fieldwork in Orce. The fieldwork is part of the project Earliest Inhabitants of Europe (), focused on the Pleistocene sites of the 'Orce Archaeological Area' where important sites such as Venta Micena, Barranco León, and Fuente Nueva 3 are located. The project is led by prof. from the University of Granada

Anu visits the Georgian National Museum and a newly discovered site in Orozmani together with Miikka Tallavaara, Mikael Fortelius and Alexander Bakhia, opening promising perspectives on early human history in the Caucasus. We were lucky to be hosted by (National Research Centre of Archaeological and Prehistoric Studies of Georgia), who made the fieldwork both smooth and enjoyable. Our fieldwork was supported by the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.

May and June 2024

In May, Katja and Outi Meinander from the Finnish Meteorological Institute visit the Sonnblick Observatory in the Austrian Alps to set up dust traps. In June, Katja, Outi Meinander and Iida Kostamo visit the RiF Field Station in NE Iceland for the same reason. The work is part of the EU-INTERACT DUST-project, lead by Adjunct Professor Outi Meinander (FMI).

December 2023

Katja Bohm defended her doctoral dissertation entitled “”. The opponent was Associate Professor Alex Pullen from Clemson University, USA. Congratulations!

Katja presented her work in the AGU Fall Meeting 2023 in San Fransisco, USA.

October 2023 – January 2024

Piritta visited VU again as part of a Cotutelle PhD project. During this visit she presented the currents state of her project at FAIRPLAY (Fluvial Aeolian InteRactions on PLAnetarY surfaces) Workshop at European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), Noordwijk, The Netherlands.

September – October 2023

Anu, and Piritta together with Miikka Tallavaara, Liu Liping, Tegan Foister and Turo Ylitalo carried out fieldwork in China focusing on Early Pleistocene deposits and fossil localities in the Nihewan Basin. The work was done in close collaboration with our long-term partners from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP, CAS). This fieldwork was part of the Research Council of Finland consortium project Environments and Energy Use of Early Humans on the Edge (EDGE).

June 2023

Anu and Turo visit University of Granada to sample the drill cores from the Orce area

March 2023

Another productive stay at the Université de Monastir, Tunisia, including lectures, discussions and continuing collaborative work with prof. Hatem Dhaouadi.

October 2022

Joonas Wasiljeff defended his doctoral dissertation entitled as “”. The opponent was Professor from CNRS, University of Rennes, France. Congratulations Joonas!

September – November 2022

Piritta visits VU University Amsterdam as part of a Cotutelle PhD project. While visiting, Piritta is working on dynamic image analysis and end member modelling of grain size distributions of Chinese loess deposits.

September 2022

Tang Hui started in a new position at the Finnish Meteorolgical Institute, congratulations and looking forward to the future collaborations!

Katja participates the Asian climate, tectonics and biodiversity conference in London

August – September 2022

Anu and did fieldwork in Western Mongolia together with and colleagues from the . A very successful field season! The fieldwork was part of an Academy of Finland funded project “Tracing the Winds” to investigate late Neogene paleoclimate and vegetation distributions.

August 2022

Professor from the University of Monastir came to visit Department of Geosciences and Geography to discuss recent field research on Tunisian speleothems with Anu and Professor .

A “Tracing the Winds” project meeting in Helsinki with Hui, Professor and from the University of Oslo.

July 2022

Katja participates Heavy Mineral School at the University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy

June 2022

Piritta graduates, congratulations! Her MSc thesis is entitled “”

May 2022

Anu, , and visit in Paris to study the early Pleistocene Nihewan fauna collected by Emile Licent and colleagues in the 1920’s.

March 2022

Anu, Yun-Chuan Chung and professor carried together with professor (University of Monastir) carried out fieldwork in Tunisia and collected speleothem and salt lake sediment samples to investigate palaeoclimates and greening events in the Sahara during Quaternary

February 2022

The K. H. Renlund foundation gave a grant to Anu and colleagues to study Finnish loess deposits

January 2022

Dr. Chris Baumann starts as a postdoctoral researcher in the “Environments and energy use of early humans on the edge” project. Chris is working on stable oxygen and carbon isotope records from the Nihewan region of northern China. Welcome Chris!

June 2021

We got Academy of Finland consortium project funding with Miikka Tallavaara and Indrė Žliobaitė! The project is entitled "Environments and energy use of early humans on the edge".

July 2020

Anu visits Orce, Spain to delve in to first human occupation sites together with , and etc.

June 2020

Tuomas Junna graduates, congrats! His master's thesis on soil ferromanganese nodules can be found . 

March 2020

visits the Department of Geosciences and Geography and provides his expertise in preparing the reclaimed treasures from the 2019 Mongolian field trip.

January 2020

Anu and Katja visited China to install dust traps to collect modern eolian dust.

November and December 2019

Ferhat goes for field work in Africa. Joonas visits the IsoPaleoLab second time to continue the analyses begun on February.

August and September 2019

Anu, Ferhat and Joonas travel to western Mongolia together with to study Neogene fossil localities.

June and July 2019

Joonas visits Prof. and in Beijing, China.

April 2019

Joonas EGU General Assembly in Vienna, Austria.

February and March 2019

Joonas visits the Isotopologue Paleosciences Laboratory () at the University of Michigan, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and carries out novel reseach on tooth enamel triple oxygen isotopes under the supervision of Assoc. Prof.

October 2018 - The NOW database meeting

The NOW database meeting “NOW and the future of the past” in Bratislava

September 2018 - LoessFest 2018

Anu visits as a in the LoessFest meeting in Volgograd.

August 2018 - Fieldwork in Iran and China

Anu goes to fieldwork on late Miocene deposits and fossil mammal localities in Lorestan and Maragheh, Iran. Joonas works with Oligocene deposits and fossil mammal locality in Ulantatal, Inner Mongolia.

July 2018 - Fieldwork in Spain

Anu participates fieldwork in the Orce region in the Guadix-Baza Basin (Granada, Andalusia, southern Spain)

June 2018 - Grant from the Academy of Finland

Anu has been granted a 4-year project funding by the Academy of Finland “Tracing the winds – Releasing the potential of the East Asian dust record of environmental change”

May 2018 - Fieldwork in China

Anu and Yuan are fieldworking in the Nihewan Basin, China, together with prof. Zhang Zhaoqun from the (IVPP).

January 2018 - Doctoral dissertation accepted

On 19 January Yuan defended her titled as Provenance and sedimentology of Red Clay and loess in northern China which was examined by docent from Uppsala University, Sweden.

January 2018 - 33rd Nordic Geological Winter Meeting

Anu, Yuan and Joonas participated the Nordic Geological Winter Meeting 2018 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and presented their .

October 2017 - Visiting fellow at the IGGL

Joonas received a from the Ivar Giæver Geomagnetic Laboratory (IGGL), and is visiting IGGL in Oslo on October. 

August and September 2017 - Fieldwork in China and Iran

On August and the beginning of September 2017 Joonas travels to Ulantatal for field working. Anu is fieldworking in Iran on September.

July 2017 - International Conference on Rock Magnetism 2017

On July 2017 Joonas participates the at Fort Hoofddijk, Utrecht University.

May 2017 - A trip to the Netherlands

On May 2017 Yuan and Anu visit the Netherlands to work with the collaborators at VU University Amsterdam.

April 2017 - Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall

During the spring and summer 2017, the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge as a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall.

February 2017 - Grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation

On February 2017 Anu receives a from the Finnish Cultural Foundation for the field research on late Miocene hominoid-bearing bone beds in Maragheh, NW Iran.