Earth History

Faculty and students in the School of Geosciences apply various techniques to study biological, climatic and tectonic changes through Earth’s past, from near- to deep-time. 

This research also enables prediction of hazard potential, and natural resource distribution. For example, we use organic geochemical, sedimentologic and paleobiological techniques to study evolutionary patterns in plants and animals, as well as the origins of life. Studies grounded in sedimentology and stratigraphy buttressed by auxiliary data from geochemistry, paleomagnetism, and other approaches enable reconstructions of paleoenvironments and provenance, and climatic and tectonic processes from both marine and terrestrial strata. Finally, studies also include geochemical and petrologic indicators of past hydrologic, climatic and diagenetic conditions.