National Geographic did a spot on our ongoing research with Jack Williams & Sam Munoz (UW-Madison) on reconstructing paleoenvironmental and paleoecological conditions associated with the rise and fall of Cahokia.

Check out:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/131030-cahokia-native-american-flood-mystery-archaeology-pollen/

Just back from a successful trip to Indianapolis for the 2nd annual Midwest Geobiology conference at IUPUI. 14 people from WashU attended, presenting posters and a fantastic talk by Dr. Catherine Rose.

Looking forward to it next year in Chicago!

Tor is the newest member of the lab, coming from the hallowed halls of Harvard to begin grad school this fall. Tor is interested (among others) in investigating the evolution of metazoa and the impact this has on biogeochemical cycling and the preservation of proxy records.

Welcome Tor!

Goldschmidt 2013 in Florence.

A great conference, with Metzger presenting a poster on “Lateral Carbon Isotope Homogeneity in a Late Ordovician Epeiric Sea” and Rose giving a talk on “Constraining the Origin of Sulfur Isotopic Variability Through the End-Ordovician Hirnantian Glaciation and Mass Extinction”. Great jobs!

Fike and postdoc Catherine Rose just wrapped up a trip to the synchrotron at Argonne National Labs to map sulfur speciation in sedimentary strata, particularly to document variable concentrations of carbonate-associated sulfate between the different components in carbonates.

Map of sulfate distribution in a carbonate from the late Ordovician Hirnantian strata of Anticosti Island.

We are road-tripping down to Florida Bay to investigate the impact of sediment reworking on sulfides in these shallow marine sediments. Hopefully, all members of Team Mud will make it back safely.

Update (July 2): Everyone survived the trip despite some hairy moments with a less than reliable boat and uncooperative weather!

Initial processing of the cores has begun.

Postdoc Catherine Rose is in Winnipeg to present at the 2013 GAC-MAC annual meeting, in a symposium in honor of Paul Hoffman. A special issue associated with this symposium will be published in Geoscience Canada.

The annual AAPG meeting is this week (May 19 – 22) in Pittsburgh, PA. Grad student Garrecht Metzger will be giving a talk on his work correlating Trenton-Utica strata in the subsurface of NY state.

Fernando Gomez is visiting the lab from CICTERRA (Cordoba, Argentina) for three months on a Fulbright Fellowship! He is investigating carbon and sulfur cycling associated with carbonate-precipitating microbialites in high-altitude lakes in the Andes.

Welcome Fernando!

Welcome to the new lab website!