Using 3D pollen models and participatory palaeoecology to connect people with intangible palaeoenvironmental records.

Quaternary palaeoecology can provide important insights for navigating Earth’s biodiversity and climate crises, but this requires results to be effectively connected with people outside academia. 3D-printed pollen models are a highly effective tool for communicating pollen-related science with diverse audiences, and we suggest that they could also drive new forms of public participation in palaeoecology. 3D models can help people learn aspects of pollen identification; we suggest that they could be used to train citizen scientist ‘para-palaeoecologists’ who can contribute to the palaeoecological research process. And, by making an otherwise intangible proxy visible and physical, they could facilitate the development of ‘ethnopalaeoecology’ approaches, in which researchers and communities integrate scientific research and traditional ecological knowledge to generate holistic histories of socioecological systems.