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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.

The Bryant Lab is delighted to welcome Emily Apel to the group – she will be conducting her PhD research developing paleoproxies for seawater pH, and investigating carbon and sulfur cycle response to environmental perturbations using geochemistry and modeling.

The Bryant Lab is delighted to welcome its first official member, Isabelle Rein. Isabelle comes to us fresh off a masters at Washington State University, where she focused on halogen geochemistry as a tracer of fluid flow in metamorphic rocks. At Purdue, she will be combining field work, geochemistry and modeling to investigate biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem dynamics during the early Triassic and late Ediacaran.

7/19/23 – Roger attended the Life & Planet conference at the Geological Society of London. The conference was dedicated to the memory of James Lovelock, the legendary scientist of Gaia hypothesis and microwave oven invention fame. Roger presented a talk on sulfur isotopes in 2 billion year old sedimentary rocks from Fennoscandia.

7/15/23 – Roger attended the Goldschmidt conference in Lyon, France. He presented an invited talk on diagenesis and geochemical proxy development in Eocene carbonates from Florida and the Bahamas.