Johannes Haemmerli
Washington State University, WA·Earth & Environmental Science
How did Earth's first stable continental crust form? Geologists answer this question mainly by reading chemical and isotope "fingerprints" in ancient rocks.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
- Topics
geochemistry
geochronology
early Earth
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Identify which accessory minerals, such as zircon, apatite, allanite and titanite, take part in mineral reactions caused by deformation in granitic rocks, using electron probe microanalysis.
- Determine whether deformation lets elements move into or out of the rock, and how this changes with strain, by comparing undeformed and highly deformed parts of the same granites at three field sites.
- Test whether Lu-Hf, Sm-Nd and Rb-Sr isotope signatures in accessory minerals and whole rocks preserve original compositions after deformation, using laser ablation ICP-MS on mineral grains.
More about the research
However, every rock that old has been squeezed, deformed or heated since it formed, so no untouched originals remain. If deformation changes those fingerprints, then models of early crust built on them could be wrong.
Why it matters
Many models of how Earth's early continents grew depend on isotope data from deformed ancient rocks. By showing whether, and at what degree of deformation, these signals can be trusted, this work could help geologists interpret such data correctly and avoid building crustal history on altered records.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Igor Puchtel
University of Maryland, MD·Earth & Environmental Science
Estimate the timing, volumes and proportions of continental and oceanic crust extracted in the Archean, using lead, samarium-neodymium and lutetium-hafnium isotopes in thirteen 3.6–2.7-billion-year-old komatiite-basalt systems.
David Moecher
University of Kentucky, KY·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine whether monazite carried by rivers from the Appalachians to the Atlantic coast comes from metamorphic rocks, granitic rocks or both, by dating detrital grains with laser-ablation split-stream mass spectrometry (LASS-ICP-MS).
Valbone Memeti
California State University-Fullerton, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine when Tuolumne magmas cooled and how long magma was present, using uranium–lead dating of zircon and titanite inclusions inside K-feldspar megacrysts from the Half Dome and Cathedral Peak units.
The school
Washington State University: 22 labs on PI Pages, $403M a year on research, 259 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.