Student projects available
Early Cambrian chronostratigraphy of South Australia
This interdisciplinary project will primarily use small shelly fossils to determine the ages of key lower Cambrian successions in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. Build your palaeontological knowledge of early Cambrian fossil fauna and their biostratigraphic applications, and complement this work with stable isotope chemostratigraphy and lithologic data. This is a great opportunity to contribute to building the geological timescale, and regionally and globally correlate rocks from South Australia during the Cambrian Explosion of life. Skills acquired via this project are widely used in both academia and industry.
Ediacaran - Cambrian transition in western Mongolia
The Ediacaran - Cambrian successions in the Gobi-Altai area in western Mongolia are some of the world’s most complete. These sections preserve the boundary in carbonates, giving the rare opportunity to identify key shelly faunal transitions from the Ediacaran to the earliest Cambrian and to tie fossil data with chemostratigraphic data. Student projects span palaeontological, biostratigraphic and chemostratigraphic investigations, along with palaeoenvironmental and palaeobiogeographic reconstructions.
An honest crust? Interrogating an enigmatic stratigraphic boundary in the lower Cambrian Arrowie Basin, South Australia
The Red Crust is an iron- and manganese-rich stratigraphic surface that caps the Flinders Unconformity - a time gap in the lower Cambrian stratigraphic succession in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. The Red Crust is very distinctive (with abundant Frutexites microstromatolites and diverse shelly fossils entrained within), so it serves as an important stratigraphic marker across the Flinders Ranges. Despite this, formation of the Crust and its relationship to the Flinders Unconformity is poorly understood. This project will combine field mapping, palaeontological data, carbonate geology and geochemistry to solve one of the key mysteries embedded in this world-renowned package of Cambrian rocks.
Reconstructing the skeletons of some of the earliest armoured animals
Use cutting-edge 3D scanning technologies to reconstruct the oldest complex skeletons in the fossil record and resolve the functional morphology, palaeoecology and evolutionary relationships of the enigmatic animals who made them.
The first animal-built reefs and the Cambrian Explosion
This project aims to reconstruct the kinds of ancient marine environments in which early animals evolved and diversified. This includes the world's oldest animal-built reefs - made from the enigmatic archaeocyaths - and the palaeoenvironments that flanked them. This work is key for understanding the interplay between ancient marine environments and the evolution of early animals. This multi-faceted project will also incorporate investigation of how fossils are preserved in carbonates, and the effects preservation style has on fossil recovery and ecosystem reconstructions.
Macrofossils and microfacies of the Kyndalyn Member, Somerton
Limestones in the Tamworth Belt record evidence of fluctuating tropical marine palaeoenvironments that were influenced by island-arc volcanism on the margin of Gondwana. Apply classic and cutting-edge laboratory and imaging techniques to rock, mineral and fossil samples you collect in the field in order to reconstruct big-picture sedimentation processes in an early Carboniferous basin.
Nymboida and its secrets
This projects is based In the Southern end of the Clarence Moreton Basin. Little recent work has been done on this Triassic sedimentary basin. The basin is important and covers the recovery of the forests post the end Permian extinction. Projects could involve geological mapping on the margins of the basin to understand sedimentology, stratigraphy and age, and ultimately the provenance and tectonic setting of the rocks. Possible drill core inspection at Londonderry to obtain additional samples through the known coal measures.