Michael Chin

‘Towards a unified East Gondwanaland reconstruction and its implications for Himalayan Orogeny’ wins funding

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EarthByte’s Dietmar Müller, Joanne Whittaker and Ana Gibbons along with Gordon Lister and Lloyd White of the Research School of Earth Sciences at ANU, Canberra, have won funding for their project “Towards a unified East Gondwanaland reconstruction and its implications for Himalayan Orogeny” from the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund (AISRF). This project will involve a close collaboration with Yatheesh Vadakkeyakath, K.A. Kamesh Raju, G.C. Bhattacharya and S. Kiranmai of the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa, India. The project follows on from a successful French-Australian collaboration that unraveled a new high-resolution plate model of the Australia-Antarctica-India plate boundaries, while similar information was obtained for the India-Antarctica-Africa plate boundaries under two recently concluded Indo-French collaborations. … Read more…

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EarthByte attends EGU 2011

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Post-docs Nicolas Flament, Christian Heine, Jo Whittaker and Simon Williams, along with students Ana Gibbons, Charmaine Thomas and Luke Mondy presented their research at the EGU General Assembly in Vienna, which this year attracted 10,725 scientists geoscientists. Christian Heine and Ana Gibbons co-chaired the session “Unresolved problems in plate tectonics: kinematic reconstructions, plate driving forces, … Read more…

Cambridge University Press – Next-generation plate-tectonic reconstructions using GPlates

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Boyden, J., Müller, R. D., Gurnis, M., Torsvik, T. H., Clark, J. A., Turner, M., … & Cannon, J. S. (2011). Next-generation plate-tectonic reconstructions using GPlates. Geoinformatics: Cyberinfrastructure for the Solid Earth Sciences. Keller, G. R., & Baru, C. (Eds.). (2011). Geoinformatics: cyberinfrastructure for the solid Earth sciences. Cambridge University Press. Download the paper – pdf

IODP workshop on Indian Ocean Drilling scheduled for late 2011

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An Integrated Ocean Drilling (IODP) workshop on Indian Ocean Drilling to be held in late 2011 in Goa, India has just been approved, funded by $33,000 from IODP, and supported by the Australian IODP Office, which plans to send 15 Australians and Kiwis to the meeting, including EarthByte’s Dietmar Müller, and Stephen Gallagher (UMelb), Neville Exon (ANU), Richard Arculus (ANU), Mike Coffin (Tasmania) and Richard Wysoczanski (NZ, NIWA). The workshop is timed to suit an April 2012 drilling proposal submission deadline. … Read more…

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EarthByte attends 2010 Theo Murphy High Flyers Think Tank

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This month saw the release of the proceedings of the 2010 Theo Murphy High Flyers Think Tank, which was held at the Australian Academy of Sciences in August 2010 and brought together the nation’s top geoscience researchers, including EarthByte’s Prof. Dietmar Müller and Dr Thomas Landgrebe, to address challenges in mineral exploration. Dietmar and Thomas … Read more…

Full-fit, palinspastic reconstruction of the conjugate Australian-Antarctic margins

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AusAntCThick47Ma-1Despite decades of study the pre-rift configuration and early rifting history between Australia and Antarctica is not well established. The plate boundary system during the Cretaceous includes the evolving Kerguelen-Broken Ridge Large Igneous Province in the west as well as the conjugate passive and transform margin segments of the Australian and Antarctic continents. … Read more…

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Dynamic subsidence of eastern Australia during the Cretaceous

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Dynamic Subsidence of Eastern Australia Matthews et al (2011)During the Early Cretaceous Australia’s eastward passage over sinking subducted slabs induced widespread dynamic subsidence and formation of a large eperiogenic sea in the eastern interior. Despite evidence for convergence between Australia and the paleo-Pacific, the subduction zone location has been poorly constrained. Using coupled plate tectonic-mantle convection models, we test two end-member scenarios, one with subduction directly east of Australia’s reconstructed continental margin, and a second with subduction translated ~1000 km east, implying the existence of a back-arc basin. Our models incorporate a rheological model for the mantle and lithosphere, plate motions since 140 Ma and evolving plate boundaries. While mantle rheology affects the magnitude of surface vertical motions, timing of uplift and subsidence depends on plate boundary geometries and kinematics. … Read more…

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High resolution reconstruction of the Central and Eastern Indian Ocean

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Project Summary
Plate reconstruction models for the rifting and separation of Gondwanaland’s conjugate margins continue to be poorly constrained. We propose to develop a new, high-resolution plate model for the central and eastern Indian ocean by synthesizing old and new geological and geophysical data utilizing combined French and Australian advanced software for magnetic anomaly modeling and plate tectonic reconstructions. We will test alternative continental fit reconstruction hypotheses by using a variety of reconstructed data sets. Such a joint research is timely, as the Indian Ocean continental margins become the focus of intense oil and gas exploration.  … Read more…

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