Živilė Žigaitė

Dr Žigaitė’s research aims to understand the relationships of physiological and environmental factors, mirrored in the chemical and structural composition of vertebrate teeth.

Živilė is specifically focusing on stable isotope, rare earth and trace element compositions of fish and aquatic tetrapod dental biomineral, and their relation to animal’s biology, ecology and ambient water qualities. Živilė’s expertise range form micro-scale elemental and isotopic analyses of bioapatite via in-situ micro-beam and compound-selective mass-spectrometry, to structural variety, development and crystalline properties of dental hard tissues in early vertebrates. One of the main interests of her work is to recognise geochemical signatures preserved in fossil bioapatite, and to determine them as proxies to palaeobiology and palaeoenvironment. Currently Živilė is also developing tools for molecular recognition of fossil and living dental tissues, and supervising a PhD project on geochemical archives in trace fossils.

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