Beginning in January 2018, Magnus A. R. Harding will continue working in the group now as a research assistant. Magnus’ main focus will be to extend ongoing studies of the chemical composition of fossil plant leaves.
New paper in press: Ocean redox conditions between the Neoproterozoic Snowballs
A new paper on the redox conditions in the oceans after the Sturtian and before the Marinoan ‘Snowball’ glaciations is now press in Precambrian Research. Our results suggest that oceans remained largely anoxic after the Sturtian glaciation and that something else triggered oxygenation of the Ediacaran oceans after the Marinoan glaciation. This ‘something’ could be due to the way animals affect the global … Read More
Julius C. Havsteen starts his MSc thesis project in January 2018
MSc Geology student Julius C. Havsteen starts his thesis project in January 2018, where he will be exploring changes in the the globally integrated ocean oxygenation state during the Silurian Lau event. The Lau event is the largest carbon isotope excursion in the Phanerozoic, recording a brief period of dramatic changes in the Earth system. Nevertheless, the driving … Read More
Welcome to PhD student Alvaro Del Rey
On September 1, Alvaro del Rey joined the lab as a PhD fellow in geobiology and experimental isotope geochemistry. Alvaro has a background in igneous petrology and will now be working on uranium isotopes in carbonate rocks during Mid-Paleozoic events.
Art in Science Award 2017
Magnus Harding obtained this picture of the element distribution in a ~60 million year old plant fossil (Taxodium or Sequoia) using TOF-SIMS on a specimen from the Natural History Museum of Denmark collections. The graphics was awarded the annual Art in Science Award 2017for “the best scientific explanation”. Here is a photo from the award show.
BSc thesis defence: Magnus A. R. Harding
BSc student Magnus August Ravn Harding will defend his thesis project, entitle: “Surface analyses of fossil leaves”. When: November 8, 2017 @ 15.00–16.00. Where: Meeting room, Geological Museum, Øster Voldgade 5-7, 1350 Copenhagen K
Why did it take so long before animals appeared on Earth?
One of the big mysteries in the history of life is why it took so long time for complex organisms to evolve. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and fossils of the first motile animals are ca. 555 million years old. It took 3,945,000,000 years or almost 4 million millennia before evolution in mostly microbial ecosystems evolved organisms with a capacity to … Read More
Science sets sail: outreach and networking onboard tall ship Thor Heyerdahl
Friedrich-Alexander Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg have arranged an old fashioned expedition with the three-masted scooner, Thor Heyerdahl. The cruise will bring together scientists from a wide range of fields and from countries around the Baltic Sea. Tais will attend the cruise along with geologists from Germany and the UK on the first leg fra Malmø (Sweden) to Riga (Latvia) from July 18-25. … Read More
Publication: Brief oxygenation event during the Cambrian explosion linked to a reorganization of the marine biogeochemical cycles – might be animal-driven
A recent article published in Geochemical Perspectives Letters, we present carbon, sulfur and uranium isotope data from Siberian limestone sections straddling the Cambrian Stage 2–3 boundary (Tommotian-Atdabanian) 521–519 million years ago. We discovered a new type of oceanic event where enhanced marine organic carbon and pyrite burial coincides with a more oxygenated ocean state. The event was relative brief, … Read More
Lecture: Andy Knoll – Systems Paleobiology
The relationship between Earth and life through time How Systems Paleobiology uses physiology as the conceptual bridge between paleobiological and geochemical data sets and provides us with a template for understanding global climate change and evaluation of the habitability of other planets. Professor Andrew H. Knoll, Fisher Professor of Natural History,Departments of Organismic and Evolutionary … Read More