RESEARCH
Our research spans the entire geologic time scale ...
Our lab is at the leading edge of modern U-Pb dating of geological materials. Our successful development and application of these methods has included many major milestones, for example:
- order-of-magnitude improvement in the precision of dating meteorites, thereby establishing a robust chronology for the consolidation of the early solar system
- increasingly detailed understanding of the evolution of the Earth’s crust on almost every continent
- greater understanding of short-lived, often Ni-Cu-PGE-bearing, mafic magmatic events in Large Igneous Provinces to reconstruct now-rifted and dispersed Au- and base metal-hosting Archean cratons from precise baddeleyite/zircon dating
- correlations between mass extinction events, volcanism, and meteorite impacts
- demonstrated ore-forming processes intimately associated with stratigraphic, structural, metamorphic and hydrothermal evolution of a given geological belt; U-Pb geochronology provides an essential tool for resolving stratigraphic and magmatic vs. hydrothermal controls on metallogenesis
- we are part of the international EARTHTIME initiative working to establish ultra-high precision geochronological benchmarks for an improved understanding of the tempo of biological evolution and its punctuated extinctions in Earth history
- researchers in our lab have published many hundreds of papers (please contact us for a complete listing)