News

Here are all the latest EarthByte news posts. See News Archive for recent years.

EarthByte also publishes the ‘GPlates News‘ newsletter every quarter. The GPlates newsletter contains features such as the latest GPlates updates, tutorials and datasets, EarthByte news highlights and much more! Click here to view the latest and past editions of ‘GPlates News‘, or subscribe to receive the newsletters.

Welcome to two new PhD students — Satyam Pratap Singh and Tom New

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Welcome to two new PhD students who have joined the EarthByte Group. Satyam Pratap Singh has joined the Stellar project working on reconstructions of palaeogeography through time and will be jointly supervised by Maria Seton, Sabin Zahirovic and Nicky Wright. Tom New has joined a recently funded ARC Discovery Project on plate-plume interactions and will … Read more…

Nature Communications: Coupled influence of tectonics, climate, and surface processes on landscape evolution in southwestern North America

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The Cenozoic landscape evolution in southwestern North America is ascribed to crustal isostasy, dynamic topography, or lithosphere tectonics, but their relative contributions remain controversial. Here we reconstruct landscape history since the late Eocene by investigating the interplay between mantle convection, lithosphere dynamics, climate, and surface pro- cesses using fully coupled four-dimensional numerical models. Our quantified … Read more…

Environmental stability on Earth allowed marine biodiversity to flourish

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Modern ocean biodiversity, which is at its highest level ever, was achieved through long-term stability of the location of so-called biodiversity hotspots, regions of especially high numbers of species, scientists have found. The findings, published in Nature, were reached through a pioneering model that reconstructs the diversity of marine animals from their origin – some … Read more…

Nature: Post-extinction recovery of the Phanerozoic oceans and biodiversity hotspots

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The fossil record of marine invertebrates has long fuelled the debate as to whether or not there are limits to global diversity in the sea. Ecological theory states that, as diversity grows and ecological niches are filled, the strengthening of biological interactions imposes limits on diversity. However, the extent to which biological interactions have constrained … Read more…

Solid Earth: A tectonic-rules-based mantle reference frame since 1 billion years ago – implications for supercontinent cycles and plate–mantle system evolution

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Understanding the long-term evolution of Earth’s plate-mantle system is reliant on absolute plate motion models in a mantle reference frame, but such models are both difficult to construct and controversial. We present a tectonic rules-based optimisation approach to construct a plate motion model in a mantle reference frame covering the last billion years and use … Read more…

G-cubed: Slow Geodynamics and Fast Morphotectonics in the Far East Tethys

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How can the sluggish, long-wavelength mantle convection be expressed by so many time and space scales of morphotectonic activity? To investigate these relationships, we explore the Java-Banda subduction zone, where geodynamic records cluster. In the far-East Tethys, the exceptionally arcuate Banda subduction zone circumscribes the deepest oceanic basin on Earth, seismotectonic activity slices the upper … Read more…

Front Earth Sci: Two-step Gravity Inversion Reveals Variable Architecture of African Cratons

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The lithospheric build-up of the African continent is still to a large extent unexplored. In this contribution, we present a new Moho depth model to discuss the architecture of the three main African cratonic units, which are: West African Craton, Congo Craton, and Kalahari Craton. Our model is based on a two-step gravity inversion approach … Read more…

PyBacktrack 1.4 released

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PyBacktrack 1.4 is now available, and adds support for generating paleobathymetry grids from submerged present-day crust. PyBacktrack is available as a Python package and a Docker image. Installation instructions can be found online in the pyBacktrack documentation. Changes since version 1.3: Can now generate paleobathymetry grids: Submerged oceanic and continental present-day crust is backtracked and … Read more…

Plate tectonic carbon cycle explains how Earth maintains a Goldilocks climate

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Earth’s hot and cold climates driven by tectonic plate speeds A new study has revealed how the plate tectonic carbon cycle maintains a “Goldilocks climate” on Earth that is neither too hot nor too cold. It is now established that CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels are driving atmospheric CO2 above 400 parts per million … Read more…

Evolution of Earth’s tectonic carbon conveyor belt

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This video shows plate motions, carbon storage within tectonic plates and carbon degassing along mid-ocean ridges and subduction zones through time. Our carbon model shows these processes alone cannot explain global cooling in the Cenozoic Era. The effects of rock erosion, not shown here, played a key role. Arrows indicate plate motion speed relative to … Read more…

Postgraduate Research Scholarship in Deep-time exploration for mineral deposits along convergent margins

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Postgraduate research scholarship at the EarthByte Group for international and domestic students. Up to $107,850 stipend scholarship to support a PhD student to research in deep-time exploration for mineral deposits along convergent margins   Highlights Value Eligibility Open date Closing date $35,950 pa (for up to 3 years, with a possible 6 month extension) Full-time … Read more…

Download pyGPlates 0.36

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Welcome to the download page for pyGPlates 0.36. Information about this release may be found on the News page of the GPlates website. This page contains the following sections: Download file descriptions Download file links Download file descriptions There are 21 download files consisting of: Binary installers to install pyGPlates on Windows, macOS and Ubuntu. … Read more…

EarthByte welcomes Matthew Merkas and Yiyan Wang

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Welcome Matthew Merkas and Yiyan Wang to the EarthByte Group! They will work with Maria Seton and Michael Chin on “GPlates In Schools” mobile app. The “GPlates-in-schools” program is funded by AuScope, comprising a GPlates app with integrated lesson plans, to provide an Earth Science-focused education engagement initiative. Matthew is an app developer in the EarthByte … Read more…

Part-time research assistant position in mineral exploration

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The EarthByte Group is looking for a research assistant as part of our STELLAR industry project in collaboration with BHP. The casual position will be for up to 10 hours per week on average. The successful applicant can complete these hours through a regular weekly schedule or clump their hours into intensive weekly blocks (i.e., … Read more…

ANZIC Forum 2022 Talk: Deep-sea hiatuses track the vigour of Cenozoic ocean bottom currents

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By Adriana Dutkiewicz Abstract: Scientific ocean drilling data collected over half a century have generated a treasure trove of data to map deep sea currents.  We have compiled data from more than 200 drill sites to map the continuity of the deep sea sedimentary record and to understand how global warming– or cooling – is … Read more…

Geoscience Data Journal: Subduction and carbonate platform interactions

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Plate tectonics, as the unifying theory in Earth sciences, controls the functioning of important planetary processes on geological timescales. Here, we present an open-source workflow that interrogates community digital plate tectonic reconstructions, primarily in the context of the planetary deep carbon cycle. We present an updated plate tectonic reconstruction covering the last 400 million years … Read more…

Terra Nova: Timing of partial melting and granulite formation during the genesis of high to ultra-high temperature terranes: Insight from numerical experiments

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Long-lived high to ultra-high temperature (HT-UHT) granulitic terranes formed throughout Earth’s history. Yet, the detailed processes involved in their formation re- main unresolved and notably the sequence of appearance and duration of migmatisa- tion and granulites conditions in the orogenic cycle. These processes can be evaluated by analytical and numerical models. First, solving the steady-state … Read more…

Identifying Characteristic and Anomalous Mantle From the Complex Relationship Between Abyssal Hill Roughness and Spreading Rates

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The dependence of abyssal hill roughness on mid-ocean ridge (MOR) spreading rate is an important indicator for faulting and volcanism. I reanalyze this relationship using a global gravity-based prediction of root-mean-square (RMS) heights, enabling dense sampling of RMS/spreading rate space and thus a far more detailed examination than possible with bathymetric data. RMS histograms are … Read more…

The use of machine learning in processing remote sensing data for mineral exploration

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ASEG will be hosting their next technical meeting on Wednesday 20th April, featuring EarthByter Ehsan Farahbakhsh Title: The use of machine learning in processing remote sensing data for mineral exploration     Time:                    5:30 pm for 6:00 pm start Address:              Level 2, 99 on York (99 York St, Sydney. Room ‘York 2’) For virtual attendance, … Read more…

Groundwater ‘superhighway’ modelled along Australia’s east coast

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When floodwaters recede, where do they go? By Loren Smith University of Sydney researchers have modelled water-storing aquifers that perform a natural balancing act: they absorb water during floods and supply water during drought. Yet human intervention is limiting their function. University of Sydney researchers have identified a groundwater ‘superhighway’ along Australia’s east coast. Stretching from … Read more…

A journey across the Atlantic seafloor

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A journey across the Atlantic seafloor More than two thirds of our planet are covered by water. What lies underneath is a mystery – only 20 percent of the sea floor has been explored in detail. But hasn’t it always appealed to you, this underwater world with all its mysteries? Then join us for a … Read more…

When the Earth warms, the ocean speeds up

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Sixty-six million years of geological data suggests that heating makes ocean currents stronger. By Ellen McPhiddian, Cosmos Ocean currents play a big role in floods, droughts, and other large-scale weather patterns. We know that ocean circulation will be affected by global warming – but figuring out exactly how it will be affected is much more difficult. Will there be … Read more…

Global warming speeds up currents in the ocean’s abyss

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University of Sydney media release University of Sydney scientists have used the geological record of the deep sea to discover that past global warming has sped up deep ocean circulation. This is one of the missing links for predicting how future climate change may affect heat and carbon capture by the oceans. Circulation of the … Read more…

Nature Commmunications: Impact of green clay authigenesis on element sequestration in marine settings

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Retrograde clay mineral reactions (reverse weathering), including glauconite formation, are first-order controls on element sequestration in marine sediments. Here, we report substantial element sequestration by glauconite formation in shallow marine settings from the Triassic to the Holocene, averaging 3 ± 2 mmol·cm−²·kyr−1 for K, Mg and Al, 16 ± 9 mmol·cm−²·kyr−1 for Si and 6 ± 3 mmol·cm−²·kyr−1 for Fe, which is ~2 orders of magnitude higher … Read more…

Geology: Deep-sea hiatuses track the vigor of Cenozoic ocean bottom currents

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The deep-sea stratigraphic record is full of gaps. These hiatuses track changes in ocean circulation and chemistry, but determining their timing and causes has been limited by sparse data and incomplete knowledge of ocean gateway evolution in earlier studies. We combine a significantly expanded, age-calibrated deep-sea stratigraphic database with a global tectonic and paleo–water depth … Read more…

Scientific Reports: Constraining the response of continental‐scale groundwater flow to climate change

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Numerical models of groundwater flow play a critical role for water management scenarios under climate extremes. Large‐scale models play a key role in determining long-range flow pathways from continental interiors to the oceans, yet struggle to simulate the local flow patterns offered by small‐scale models. We have developed a highly scalable numerical framework to model … Read more…

EPSL: Long-term Phanerozoic sea level change from solid Earth processes

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The sedimentary rock record suggests that global sea levels may have fluctuated by hundreds of meters throughout Phanerozoic times. Long-term (10–80 Myr) sea level change can be inferred from paleogeographic reconstructions and stratigraphic methods can be used to estimate sea level change over 1–10 Myr in tectonically quiescent regions assumed to be stable. Plate tectonic … Read more…