The Bioindicators services comprise a set of laboratories and types of equipment for the collection and study of modern, fossil and subfossil proxies, as well as for carrying out physicochemical measurements, from natural, archaeological and palaeontological sediments from various biogeographical contexts. The sedimentary archives are more particularly dated from the Holocene but may date back several tens of millions of years. Modern samples are also processed to produce reference models for calibrating the fossil signal. The research undertaken is aimed at reconstructing past environments, abiotic conditions and ecological processes.
The Bioindicators services possess equipment enabling the whole chain of sediment treatment to be carried out: from storage in cold rooms to physical and chemical treatments for extracting proxies, and microscopes for their observation, quantification and morphometric measurements. Most of the laboratories are associated with large reference collections for the identification of fossil remains.
