Proceedings of the West Australian Basins Symposium IV – Tectonic Evolution and Continental Fragmentation of the Southern West Australian Margin

Whittaker, J.M., Halpin, J.A., Williams, S.E., Hall, L.S., Gardner, R., Kobler, M.E., Daczko, N.R. and Müller, R.D., (2013). Tectonic Evolution and Continental Fragmentation of the Southern West Australian Margin. Proceedings of the West Australian Basins Symposium IV, 18p. Tectonic Evolution and Continental Fragmentation of the Southern West Australian Margin

Proceedings of the West Australian Basins Symposium IV – Newly-recognised Continental Fragments Rifted from the West Australian Margin

Williams, S. E., Whittaker, J. M., & Müller, R. D. (2013). Newly-recognised continental fragments rifted from the West Australian margin. In The Sedimentary Basins of Western Australia IV. Proceedings of the Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia Symposium, Perth, WA (p. 10). Newly-recognised continental fragments rifted from the West Australian margin

Proceedings of the West Australian Basins Symposium IV – Structural Architecture of Australia’s Southwest Continental Margin and Implications for Early Cretaceous Basin Evolution

Hall, L., Gibbons, A. D., Bernardel, G., Whittaker, J. M., Nicholson, C., Rollet, N., & Müller, R. D. (2013). Structural architecture of Australia’s southwest continental margin and implications for Early Cretaceous basin evolution. In Proceedings, West Australian Basins Symposium. Petroleum Exploration Society of Australia (pp. 18-21). Structural architecture of Australia’s southwest continental margin and implications for … Read more…

L’Oréal Fellowship for Women in Science awarded to Dr Jo Whittaker

Ex-Earthbyter Dr Joanne Whittaker was awarded the L’Oréal Fellowship for Women in Science for research on ‘How India and Australia Broke up over the last 100 million years’. Congratulations Jo! Royal Society Annual Awards Dinner 2013, left to right: The President, Donald Hector, Judith Wheeldon AM, Professor Marilyn Renfree AO, John Hardie MRSN, Dr Joanne … Read more…

Grace Shephard submits her PhD thesis

Congratulations to Grace Shephard who submitted her PhD thesis this month! Well done! Grace will be taking up a post-doctoral position in Norway at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED) and will continue to work on plate motion modelling and numerical simulations of mantle flow.

Tectonophysics – The rift to break-up evolution of the Gulf of Aden: Insights from 3D numerical lithospheric-scale modelling

Brune, S., & Autin, J. (2013). The rift to break-up evolution of the Gulf of Aden: Insights from 3D numerical lithospheric-scale modelling. Tectonophysics, 607, 65-79. doi:10.1016/j.tecto.2013.06.029. The rift to break-up evolution of the Gulf of Aden: Insights from 3D numerical lithospheric-scale modelling

Geology – Seawater chemistry driven by supercontinent assembly, breakup, and dispersal

Müller, R. D., Dutkiewicz, A., Seton, M., & Gaina, C. (2013). Seawater chemistry driven by supercontinent assembly, breakup, and dispersal. Geology, 41(8), 907-910. doi: 10.1130/G34405.1. Seawater chemistry driven by supercontinent assembly, breakup, and dispersal

Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth – Early India-Australia spreading history revealed by newly detected Mesozoic magnetic anomalies in the Perth Abyssal Plain

Williams, S. E., Whittaker, J. M., Granot, R., & Müller, D. R. (2013). Early India‐Australia spreading history revealed by newly detected Mesozoic magnetic anomalies in the Perth Abyssal Plain. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 118(7), 3275-3284. doi:10.1002/jgrb.50239. Early India‐Australia spreading history revealed by newly detected Mesozoic magnetic anomalies in the Perth Abyssal Plain

Earth Science Reviews – The tectonic evolution of the Arctic since Pangaea breakup: Integrating constraints from surface geology and geophysics with mantle structure

Shephard, G. E., Müller, R. D., & Seton, M. (2013). The tectonic evolution of the Arctic since Pangea breakup: Integrating constraints from surface geology and geophysics with mantle structure. Earth-Science Reviews, 124, 148-183. doi:10.1.1016/j.earscirev.2013.05.012. The tectonic evolution of the Arctic since Pangea breakup: Integrating constraints from surface geology and geophysics with mantle structure

New collaboration launched

Launch of the $12million, 3-year collaboration between NICTA (Australia’s Information and Communications Technology Centre of Excellence), The University of Sydney, SIRCA, and Macquarie University. This is a ground-breaking project that will use big-data and machine learning to deliver new insights to the natural sciences – the geoscience thread is being led by Prof Dietmar Müller.

Australian Journal of Earth Sciences – Opalisation of the Great Artesian Basin (central Australia): an Australian story with a Martian twist

Assoc Prof Patrice Rey generates global media coverage with his paper about the formation of opals in the SMH, The Australian, SkyNews, Australian Geographic, and many others. Rey, P. F. (2013). Opalisation of the Great Artesian Basin (central Australia): an Australian story with a Martian twist. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences,60(3), 291-314. Opalisation of the … Read more…

Computational Mechanics – Oblique mid ocean ridge subduction modelling with the parallel fast multipole boundary element method

Quevedo, L., Hansra, B., Morra, G., Butterworth, N., & Müller, R. D. (2013). Oblique mid ocean ridge subduction modelling with the parallel fast multipole boundary element method. Computational Mechanics, 51(4), 455-463. DOI 10.1007/s00466-012-0751-5. Oblique mid ocean ridge subduction modelling with the parallel fast multipole boundary element method

Earth and Planetary Science Letters – Organisation of the tectonic plates in the last 200 Myr

Morra, G., Seton, M., Quevedo, L., & Müller, R. D. (2013). Organization of the tectonic plates in the last 200 Myr. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 373, 93-101. doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2013.04.020. Organization of the tectonic plates in the last 200 Myr

Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems – Global sediment thickness dataset updated for the Australian-Antarctic Southern Ocean

Whittaker, J. M., Goncharov, A., Williams, S. E., Müller, R. D., & Leitchenkov, G. (2013). Global sediment thickness data set updated for the Australian‐Antarctic Southern Ocean. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 14(8), 3297-3305. doi:10.1002/ggge.20181. Global sediment thickness data set updated for the Australian‐Antarctic Southern Ocean

The tectonic evolution of the Arctic since Pangea breakup: Integrating constraints from surface geology and geophysics with mantle structure

Shephard Arctic IconCitation
Shephard, G. E., Müller, R. D., & Seton, M. (2013). The tectonic evolution of the Arctic since Pangea breakup: Integrating constraints from surface geology and geophysics with mantle structure. Earth-Science Reviews, 124, 148-183. doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2013.05.012

Summary
The tectonic evolution of the circum-Arctic, including the northern Pacific, Siberian and North American margins, since the Jurassic has been punctuated by the opening and closing of ocean basins, the accretion of autochthonous and allochthonous terranes and associated deformation. This complexity is expressed in the uncertainty of plate tectonic models of the region, with the time-dependent configurations and kinematic history remaining poorly understood. … Read more…

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Total sediment thickness of the World’s Oceans & Marginal Seas, version 2

Sedthickv2 256x188This update replaces the original Total Sediment Thickness of the World’s Oceans & Marginal Seas (Divins, 2003).

Citation
Whittaker, J. M., Goncharov, A., Williams, S. E., Müller, R. D., & Leitchenkov, G. (2013). Global sediment thickness data set updated for the Australian‐Antarctic Southern Ocean. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 14(8), 3297-3305. doi: 10.1002/ggge.20181.

Summary
NGDC’s global ocean sediment thickness grid (Divins, 2003) has been updated for the Australian-Antarctic region (60°-155°E, 30°-70°S). New seismic reflection and refraction data have been used to add detail to the conjugate Australian and Antarctic margins and intervening ocean floor where previously regional sediment thickness patterns were poorly known.  … Read more…

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GPlates legacy data and documentation

GPlates legacy image*Superceded (older) tutorials for earlier GPlates versions can still be accessed here

GPlates-compatible Data Files – Features
Below is a list of GPlates-compatible data files that can be loaded seamlessly in GPlates. The feature data are available as .gpml (GPlates Markup Language), .dat (PLATES4), .shp (ESRI Shapefile) and .xy (long, lat with header record) formats.

Data by the EarthByte Group are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. When using GPlates and the sample data to make figures for publications, we recommend citing the original data sources as indicated below.

For users of GPlates 1.5, you can find the complete archived Sample Data from this link.

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Australian Journal of Earth Sciences – Towards a predictive model for opal exploration using a spatio-temporal data mining approach

Merdith, A. S., Landgrebe, T. C., Dutkiewicz, A., & Müller, R. D. (2013). Towards a predictive model for opal exploration using a spatio-temporal data mining approach. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 60(2), 217-229. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08120099.2012.754793. Towards a predictive model for opal exploration using a spatio-temporal data mining approach Supplementary data 

Dr Simon Williams and co-PIs awarded 5 weeks ship time

Congratulations to Simon Williams and co-PIs, awarded 5-weeks of ship time on Australia’s new Marine National Facility the vessel RV Investigator in Oct-Nov, 2014. This expedition will return to the western edge of the survey the Gulden Draak Knoll, a micro-continent at the western edge of the Perth Abyssal Plain. The aim is to collect … Read more…

Towards community-driven paleogeographic reconstructions: integrating open-access paleogeographic and paleobiology data with plate tectonics

PaleobioSummary
A variety of paleogeographic reconstructions have been published, with applications ranging from paleoclimate, ocean circulation and faunal radiation models to resource exploration; yet their uncertainties remain difficult to assess as they are generally presented as low-resolution static maps. We present a methodology for ground-truthing the digital Palaeogeographic Atlas of Australia by linking the GPlates plate reconstruction tool to the global Paleobiology Database and a Phanerozoic plate motion model.

We develop a spatio-temporal data mining workflow to validate the Phanerozoic Palaeogeographic Atlas of Australia with paleoenvironments derived from fossil data. … Read more…

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From data mining to opal mining

Opal NobbyDocuments
AJES Paper
CG Paper

Opal is Australia’s national gemstone, however most significant opal discoveries were made in the early 1900’s – more than 100 years ago – until recently. Currently there is no formal exploration model for opal, meaning there are no widely accepted concepts or methodologies available to suggest where new opal fields may be found. … Read more…

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