Professor Danielle Schreve is gathering new insights into how animal species respond to abrupt climate change events, through her excavation of Gully Cave in Somerset.

Throughout the human story, we have used animal bones and caves to peer into the future. In dreams, rituals and modern science, they have functioned as time machines for people in search of answers to fundamental questions of survival.  Head of the Geography Department, palaeontologist and climate scientist, Prof Danielle Schreve, is gathering new insights into how animal species respond to abrupt climate change events, through her excavation of Gully Cave in Somerset’s Mendip Hills. Understanding species resilience, as well as range shifts and extinction events in the past can help us to make better conservation decisions today, as we face the current climate and biodiversity crises. Communicating these messages is key. Visual artist and filmmaker Sean Harris uses animation as a vessel for his exploration of Danielle’s story, the antiquarians who came before and the researchers who now follow her. Together, Schreve and Harris’ collaboration pushes against the boundaries of contemporary society has erected between art and science. Both, after all, are processes through which we discern truth and find meaning in our world.