Author: Isabelle Rein

Happy first week of classes! Emily and Isabelle both presented slides at the EAPS Research Blitz during our department colloquium. Congratulations to Emily for an honorable mention!

This August, our brand-new instrumentation arrived — the Neoma™ MC-ICP-MS! We spent a busy (and very exciting) week getting it installed in our new space. The room is still coming together, but by the end of September, we’ll be up and running.

Stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes looks as we get the lab ready for science in action!

This Summer, Emily traveled to the Annual Goldschmidt Conference in Prague, where she presented the latest research results on diagenetic influences on foraminifera from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Her project focused on morphometric data collected from two PETM sections on the Walvis Ridge, which she used to evaluate the extent of post-depositional alteration.

Check our her research abstract here!

This summer, Isabelle travelled to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL)! She collected data for Micro X-ray Fluorescence maps on Ediacaran and Cambrian carbonate rocks in an effort to understand how sulfur is preserved in Ediacaran-Cambrian carbonate rocks.

Synchrotron analyses are unique because, not only can it provide elemental chemistry data but, it can parse out different phases of sulfur (e.g., sulfate, sulfonate, pyrite, pentlandite). We can then use this information to evaluate how co-located sulfur phases are with one another, which can help us interpret the likelihood that carbonate-assocated sulfate is primary or diagenetic. These maps will serve as important context for interpreting sulfur isotopes that we measure in our BRAND NEW LAB (woo!) 

Emily traveled to George Mason University this summer to work with her collaborator, Brittany Hupp. She spent a week in Brittany’s lab on the Potoamac River completing a detailed assemblage of planktic foraminifera for a stratigraphic section from the southeast Atlantic.