News 2015

Earth-Science Reviews – The Late Cretaceous to recent tectonic history of the Pacific Ocean basin

by

Wright, N. M., Seton, M., Williams, S. E., & Müller, R. D. (2016). The Late Cretaceous to recent tectonic history of the Pacific Ocean basin. Earth-Science Reviews, 154, 138–173. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2015.11.015 The Late Cretaceous to recent tectonic history of the Pacific Ocean basin 

Earth and Planetary Science Letters – Assessing the role of slab rheology in coupled plate-mantle convection models

by

Bello, L., Coltice, N., Tackley, P. J., Müller, R. D., & Cannon, J. (2015). Assessing the role of slab rheology in coupled plate-mantle convection models. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 430, 191–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2015.08.010 Assessing the role of slab rheology in coupled plate-mantle convection models

Tectonophysics – Full-fit reconstruction of the South China Sea conjugate margins

by

Bai, Y., Wu, S., Liu, Z., Müller, R. D., Williams, S. E., Zahirovic, S., & Dong, D. (2015). Full-fit reconstruction of the South China Sea conjugate margins. Tectonophysics, 661, 121–135. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tecto.2015.08.028 Full-fit reconstruction of the South China Sea conjugate margins

Mammerickx Microplate media coverage

by
Mammerickx Microplate zoom

Mammerickx Microplate zoomThe recent EPSL article on the discovery of the Mammerickx Microplate, by Dr Kara Matthews, Prof Dietmar Müller and Prof David Sandwell, has received lots of media attention from many different countries around the world including Australia, UK, USA, India, Pakistan, Mexico, Nepal and Honduras.

See below for a list of media items:

Online Media
The biggest continental collision in Earth’s history: Scientists pinpoint crashing together of continents that created the Himalayas 50 million years ago – Daily Mail
Scientists fix date for earth-shattering Himalayan birth pangs – The Sydney Morning Herald
Microplate discovery dates birth of Himalayas – EurekAlert!
Himalayas: Discovery of first ancient Indian Ocean microplate hints at new date of formation of mountain range – Yahoo! News  … Read more…

Share

Nicky Wright is awarded the Chris Powell Medal

by
Nicky Wright Receives Chris Powell Medal

A big congratulations to PhD student Nicky Wright who was awarded the Chris Powell Medal for Postgraduate Research in Tectonics and Structural Geology from the Geological Society of Australia SGTSG. The medal is awarded at each regular field conference of the SGTSG for an outstanding research paper arising from postgraduate research on some aspect of … Read more…

EarthByte welcomes Megan Korchinski

by
Megan Korchinski

EarthByte welcomes Megan Korchinski, a visiting PhD student from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA. Megan will be studying with us for the next 3 months at the University of Sydney. Megan is part of the Structure Tectonics And Metamorphic Petrology (STAMP) research group, and is interested in the exhumation mechanisms of subducted continental crust. … Read more…

Gordon Bell Prize 2015

by
Gordon Bell Prize image

Long-term EarthByte collaborator, Prof Mike Gurnis (Caltech), is part of a team that has just received the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize for pushing the boundaries of supercomputing in the application of the most realistic numerical model of mantle convection and plate tectonics. Related News IBM wants to predict earthquakes and volcanoes with Watson Gordon Bell … Read more…

Ancient Indian Ocean microplate discovery dates birth of Himalayas

by
Mammerickx Microplate

Mammerickx MicroplateAn international team of scientists led by the University of Sydney’s School of Geosciences has discovered that the crustal stresses caused by the initial collision between India and Eurasia cracked the Antarctic Plate far away from the collisional zone and broke off a fragment the size of Tasmania in a remote patch of the central Indian Ocean.

The ongoing tectonic collision between the two continents produces enormous geological stresses that build up along the Himalayas and lead to numerous earthquakes every year – but now scientists have unravelled how stressed the Indian Plate became 47 million years ago when its northern edge first collided with Eurasia. … Read more…

Share

EarthByte projects available for Honours students in 2016

by
BGH basin main

EarthByte has now released a list of projects for potential Honours students for 2016. The project topics span: The role of mechanical stratigraphy in the structural style of deformed sedimentary basins Understanding the formation Earth’s largest continental ribbon: The Lord Howe Rise Evolution of the Australian climate and landscape over the last 100 Myr Unravelling … Read more…

GMT version 5.2 released!

by
GMT logo

Version 5.2 of the Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) software was released today! GMT is the widely used open-source software for manipulating and visualising geographic and cartesian data. The latest EarthByte global plate rotation model (Müller et al., in press) is now the default rotation model used in the GMT ‘SPOTTER‘ supplement.

Dr Nico Flament receives a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award

by
Nicolas Flament

Nicolas FlamentCongratulations to Dr Nicolas Flament for being awarded a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council!

Below are some details about Nico’s project (2016-2019) entitled ‘The geodynamics of past sea level changes‘:

This project is designed to quantify the effect of flow deep within Earth’s interior on past sea-level changes and on the flooding history of Australia over the last 550 million years. The rise and fall of sea level has shaped our planet over time. This project plans to combine recent advances in tectonic reconstructions and dynamic Earth models with the global and Australian rock record. … Read more…

Share

Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) proposal funded

by
Global plate reconstruction

A Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) Proposal, designed to study the interaction of subduction zones with carbonate platforms through time in terms of CO2 cycles, submitted to the Smithsonian Institution and prepared to a large extent by Dr Sabin Zahirovic and EarthByte Research Assistant Jodie Pall, was successful, raising $US36k. The DCO actually doubled our proposed budget from … Read more…

Basin Hub features in NCI Newsletter

by
Basin GENESIS Hub logo

The Basin GENESIS Hub was featured in NCI’s Newsletter entitled ‘Basin GENESIS Hub Launched‘. NCI Director Professor Lindsay Botten said NCI’s role in the Hub highlighted the importance of high-performance computing in industry-relevant research. “NCI is delighted to support this high-profile ARC Industry Transformation Hub, led by Professor Müller,” Professor Botten said. “Projects of this excellence, and … Read more…

EarthByte welcomes PhD Student Xuesong Ding

by
Xuesong Ding

EarthByte welcomes new PhD student Xuesong Ding who’s PhD project focuses on exploring the interplay between changes in sea level and in dynamic topography on the sequence stratigraphy of Australia’s northern margin, from the North West Shelf (NWS) to Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Ore Geology Reviews – Prospectivity of Western Australian iron ore from geophysical data using a reject option classifier

by
Prospectivity of Western Australian iron ore from geophysical data using a reject option classifier - figure

Merdith, A. S., Landgrebe, T. C., & Müller, R. D. (2015). Prospectivity of Western Australian iron ore from geophysical data using a reject option classifier. Ore Geology Reviews. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.oregeorev.2015.03.014 Prospectivity of Western Australian iron ore from geophysical data using a reject option classifier Download supplementary material – zip file

Simon Williams reports from the TECTA Cruise

by
Water Column mapping of the Tasman Sea from the TECTA voyage

Water Column mapping of the Tasman Sea from the TECTA voyageEarthByter Simon Williams is currently part of an international team of scientists sailing around the Tasman Sea on board the French Research Vessel ‘L’Atalante’. The voyage is collecting geophysical data that will help to unravel the mysteries of Earth’s geodynamic evolution and subduction initiation East of Australia, as well as profound changes in Southwest Pacific climate and ocean currents through geological history. To read the news from the voyage, download the PDF newsletters below.

Newsletter Number 1, 10 September 2015 – pdf
Newsletter Number 2, 17 September 2015 – pdf
Newsletter Number 3, 25 September 2015 – pdf
Newsletter Number 4, 1 October 2015 – pdf
… Read more…

Share

Homeward Bound… Big Data Reveals Geology of World’s Ocean Floor

by
Lithology globe Aus Ant view

The 2015 Ocean Innovation (OI) conference takes place in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada during October and focuses on “mapping our oceans.” For each OI conference, a special issue of The Journal of Ocean Technology (JOT) that complements the conference’s theme is released. A series of essays, peer review technical papers, and columns are included and … Read more…

Homeward Bound… Big Data Reveals Geology of World's Ocean Floor

by
Lithology globe Aus Ant view

The 2015 Ocean Innovation (OI) conference takes place in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada during October and focuses on “mapping our oceans.” For each OI conference, a special issue of The Journal of Ocean Technology (JOT) that complements the conference’s theme is released. A series of essays, peer review technical papers, and columns are included and … Read more…

Earth and Planetary Science Letters – Influence of subduction history on South American topography

by
Case 4 paleotopography 16Ma

Flament, N., Gurnis, M., Müller, R. D., Bower, D. J., & Husson, L. (2015). Influence of subduction history on South American topography. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 430, 9-18. doi: 10.1016/j.epsl.2015.08.006. Influence of subduction history on South American topography

Nicky Wright attends University of Michigan’s ‘Mountain Ranges and High Plateaus’ course

by
Nicky Wright Mountain Ranges and High Plateaus group photo

Nicky Wright recently attended the 2-week graduate summer course ‘Mountain Ranges and High Plateaus‘, held at the University of Michigan’s field station in Wyoming. This was only the second time the University of Michigan has held this course, which featured instructors from five other U.S. universities and international and U.S. graduate students from both the … Read more…

Nicky Wright attends University of Michigan's 'Mountain Ranges and High Plateaus' course

by
Nicky Wright Mountain Ranges and High Plateaus group photo

Nicky Wright recently attended the 2-week graduate summer course ‘Mountain Ranges and High Plateaus‘, held at the University of Michigan’s field station in Wyoming. This was only the second time the University of Michigan has held this course, which featured instructors from five other U.S. universities and international and U.S. graduate students from both the … Read more…

EarthByters attend University of Sydney Open Day

by
Sydney Uni Open Day

We are very proud of our team of volunteers who represented EarthByte at the University of Sydney Open Day on Saturday. EarthByte had six volunteers who set up at 8am, and presented activities at the Eastern Avenue hands-on interactive stations until 4pm. This is a great outreach activity, and very reassuring to see the new generations get … Read more…

EarthByte attends JAMSTEC workshop in Tokyo

by
Lord Howe Rise workshop JAMSTEC August 2015

Lord Howe Rise workshop JAMSTEC August 2015A group of international scientists, including EarthByter Dietmar Müller, is gathering this week at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) in Tokyo to put the finishing touches on an IODP proposal to drill through the Cretaceous stratigraphic section of the Lord Howe Rise (LHR), a submerged continental fragment that was once part of eastern Gondwanaland. The principal Australian agency in this collaborative project with JAMSTEC is Geoscience Australia, with Andrew Heap playing a leading role. The main emergent part of the LHR today is Lord Howe Island, an eroded remnant of a 7 million year old shield volcano, known to many Australians as a fine, but slightly pricey, getaway from the hustle and bustle of city life, full of kingfish, great beaches, a pristine coral reef and excellent outcrops of volcanic rocks and calcarenites. But what does not meet the eye is what lies underneath: several kilometers of Cenozoic and Cretaceous sediments that provide a rich record of subduction along eastern Gondwanaland, … Read more…

Share

EarthByte welcomes four new Research Assistants

by
New Research Assistants - 19 August 2015

This week EarthByte welcomes new Research Assistants Jodie Pall, Lauren Harrington, Joanna Tobin and Lena O’Toole to the group. Lena, Lauren and Joanna are hired through the Basin GENESIS Hub project and Jodie is hired through a Discovery project fund. Congratulations and welcome! Our long-time Research Assistants Serena Yeung and James Egan will also be working with the … Read more…

Opening of ARC Basin Genesis INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION RESEARCH HUB

by
Basin GENESIS Hub opening group photo 19 August 2015

Basin GENESIS Hub opening group photo 19 August 2015The ARC Research Hub for Basin Geodynamics and Evolution of Sedimentary Systems (Basin GENESIS Hub) opened today at a reception held in the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. The launch as attended by representatives from Universities, industry, Geoscience Australia, the ARC, the NCI and the Office of the NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer.

The Basin GENESIS Hub will use computer modelling to fine-tune our understanding of the nation’s sedimentary basins, which hold many of the natural resources we use in day-to-day life.

The research will be of fundamental importance to the geo-software industry used by exploration and mining companies, explains Hub Director Professor Dietmar Müller from the University of Sydney.  … Read more…

Share