News

Here are all the latest EarthByte news posts. See News Archive for recent years.

EarthByte also publishes the ‘GPlates News‘ newsletter every quarter. The GPlates newsletter contains features such as the latest GPlates updates, tutorials and datasets, EarthByte news highlights and much more! Click here to view the latest and past editions of ‘GPlates News‘, or subscribe to receive the newsletters.

Professor Dietmar Müller has been recognised as Australia’s research leader in the field of geophysics!

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✨Huge congratulations to Professor Dietmar Müller who has been recognised as Australia’s research leader in the field of geophysics! ✨ The Australian newspaper’s annual research awards acknowledge 17 scholars who are Australia’s leading researchers in chemical and material sciences – one selected from each of the 17 fields in this discipline. They are the researchers with … Read more…

PyGPlates now supports Python 3

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PyGPlates now supports Python 3.  You can download pyGPlates:   http://www.gplates.org/download.html What’s new in pyGPlates revision 28:- Windows and macOS support for Python 2.7, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8. macOS libraries signed and notarized by Apple (should no longer get security prompts). Ubuntu support for 16.04 LTS (Xenial), 18.04 LTS (Bionic), 19.10 (Eoan) and 20.04 LTS (Focal). Create topological features (dynamic … Read more…

PyBacktrack 1.3 now available as a Python package and a Docker image.

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PyBacktrack 1.3 is now available as a Python package and a Docker image. The documentation is available at: https://pybacktrack.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ Changes since version 1.2: Supports Python 3: please also use the recent pyGPlates Python 3 release. Added the following output columns: dynamic_topography: change in dynamic topography elevation since present day decompacted_depth: depth from fully decompacted layers (using surface porosity only) … Read more…

GPlates Portal passes 1 million views!

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Just in time for science week, our #AuScope supported GPlates Portal has passed 1 million views! The most popular globe remains the vertical gravity gradient globe which highlights the Earth’s lithospheric structure, followed by our seafloor lithology globe. For #ScienceWeek our portal guru Michael Chin has created a new globe for reconstructing the SRTM15 digital elevation model. Check it … Read more…

Congratulations to Sabin Zahirovic for receiving a Tall Poppy Award

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Huge congratulations to EarthByter Sabin Zahirovic for receiving a Tall Poppy Award from the Australian Institute of Policy and Science for his combined research and outreach in geology. https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/08/21/young-tall-poppy-science-award-winners.html

GPlates x Digital Directory: re-linking people with earth system science in an opportune moment of pause

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COVID-19 has stimulated both major behavioural change during lockdown; and new thoughts, experiments and even dreams as many of our human-created systems have come to a raging halt. As the traffic dims, we have the opportunity to ‘remind ourselves that we are embedded in a more-than-human world — and have some fun along the way … Read more…

Congratulations to Ömer Bodur for completing his Ph.D

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Ömer Bodur has satisfied the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Science). Dr Ömer Bodur has completed his Ph.D. in 3 years, and he is currently pursuing his postdoc at the University of Wollongong. His thesis titled: On the Dynamics of Plate Tilting: An Analytical and Numerical Approach, was supervised by … Read more…

Visualizing the Deep Carbon Cycle

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Christian Fogerty, writing for American Geophysical Union (AGU)’s EoS magazine, reviews some of our work on modelling and visualising Earth’s deep carbon cycle. We started our exciting journey with the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) in 2015, and these projects have laid the foundations of a lot of exciting future work. Importantly, the team behind the … Read more…

Paper in Geological Society London Memoirs: Geodynamics of the SW Pacific: a brief review and relations with New Caledonian geology

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A book chapter in: New Caledonia: Geology, Geodynamic Evolution and Mineral Resources. Geological Society, London, Memoirs, 51, 13–26, https://doi.org/10.1144/M51-2018-5 has finally been published. The book chapter, which gives a brief overview of the geodynamics of New Caledonia, was a collaboration between colleagues from New Caledonia, New Zealand, Australia and France. Abstract below: The SW Pacific … Read more…

Update to the Muller et al. (2019) plate reconstructions

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The GPlates team has updated the relative and absolute plate motions in the Muller et al. (2019) reconstructions.  The details of the updates are summarised below. Version 2.0 of the model (including GPlates files, age-grids, global and regional animations, stretching factor grids, etc.) are available to download from this link. The Muller et al. (2019) … Read more…

Developing community-based scientific priorities and new drilling proposals in the southern Indian and southwestern Pacific oceans

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Abstract: An International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) workshop was held at Sydney University, Australia, from 13 to 16 June 2017 and was attended by 97 scientists from 12 countries. The aim of the workshop was to investigate future drilling opportunities in the eastern Indian Ocean, southwestern Pacific Ocean, and the Indian and Pacific sectors of the … Read more…

Bayeslands: A Bayesian inference approach for parameter uncertainty quantification in Badlands

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Abstract: Bayesian inference provides a rigorous methodology for estimation and uncertainty quantification of unknown parameters in geophysical forward models. Badlands is a landscape evolution model that simulates topography development at various space and time scales. Badlands consists of a number of geophysical parameters that needs estimation with appropriate uncertainty quantification; given the observed present-day ground truth … Read more…

Tectonic, geodynamic and surface process driving forces of Australia’s paleogeography since the Jurassic

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Abstract: Today the eastern highlands of Australia are significantly more elevated than western Australia, but the continent’s geodynamic evolution suggests that the opposite was the case during Cretaceous times, when the Eromanga Sea dominated the eastern Australian landscape. Previous geodynamic and surface processes models have been used to simulate the evolution of this seaway, but … Read more…

Deep Carbon Cycling Over the Past 200 Million Years: A Review of Fluxes in Different Tectonic Settings

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Abstract: Carbon is a key control on the surface chemistry and climate of Earth. Significant volumes of carbon are input to the oceans and atmosphere from deep Earth in the form of degassed CO2 and are returned to large carbon reservoirs in the mantle via subduction or burial. Different tectonic settings (e.g., volcanic arcs, mid-ocean … Read more…

EarthByte Honours and Masters Projects 2020

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EarthByte has now released a list of Honours/Masters projects to be offered in 2020. These projects are outlined below. We can also tailor projects to your interests. Feel free to contact us by clicking the supervisor links below. Project Title Supervisor(s) How climate and subsidence control the sedimentation along the Norwegian Margin? Claire Mallard , … Read more…

GPlates 2.2 software and data sets

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GPlates 1.5 PromoGPlates is a free desktop software for the interactive visualisation of plate-tectonics. The compilation and documentation of GPlates 2.2 data was primarily funded by AuScope National Collaborative Research Infrastructure (NCRIS).

GPlates is developed by an international team of scientists and professional software developers at the EarthByte Project (part of AuScope) at the University of Sydney, the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS) at CalTech, the Geodynamics team at the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU) and the Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED) at the University of Oslo. … Read more…

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NSW South Coast Carbon Down Under Field Excursion 2019

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A fun day at the NSW South Coast introduced the Deep Carbon Observatory“Carbon Down Under” workshop participants to the Late Permian and Lower Triassic geology of the Sydney Basin. The Triassic Narrabeen sandstones, deposited after the Permo-Triassic mass extinction, are devoid of signs of life and represent a time when atmospheric CO2 was at about 6 … Read more…

Hiring research assistant as part of the Basin GENESIS Hub (BGH) project

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The EarthByte group is looking for an enthusiastic research assistant as part of the Basin GENESIS Hub (BGH) project. To apply, please send a short CV/Resume, Academic Transcript, and a paragraph explaining why you would be suitable for the role in an e-mail to Sara Morón (sara.moronpolanco@sydney.edu.au) by 5pm, 19 August 2019.

MinEx CRC PhD project: Bayesian optimisation for drill site selection

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MinEx CRC PhD project: Bayesian optimisation for drill site selection at the University of South Australia, the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney and Geoscience Australia, including the Centre for Translational Data Science and the EarthByte Group. Download the MinEx pgrad booklet at https://buff.ly/2N5DLJ0

PyBacktrack 1.1 has been released as Python package and Docker image

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PyBacktrack is a Python package that backtracks the paleo-water depth of ocean drill sites through time by combining a model of tectonic subsidence with decompaction of the site stratigraphic lithologies. PyBacktrack can also include the effects of mantle-convection driven dynamic topography on paleo-water depth, as well as sea-level variations. PyBacktrack provides a model of tectonic … Read more…

Muller et al. (2019) deforming plate reconstructions and associated digital supplements (Tectonics)

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A Global Plate Model Including Lithospheric Deformation Along Major Rifts and Orogens Since the Triassic R. Dietmar Müller, Sabin Zahirovic, Simon E. Williams, John Cannon, Maria Seton, Dan J. Bower, Michael G. Tetley, Christian Heine, Eline Le Breton, Shaofeng Liu, Samuel H. J. Russell, Ting Yang, Jonathon Leonard, and Michael Gurnis Journal: Tectonics (open access) … Read more…

How Earth’s continents became twisted and contorted over millions of years

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Dietmar Muller, Maria Seton and Sabin Zahirovic published an article in The Conversation on How Earth’s continents became twisted and contorted over millions of years based on their recently published paper in Tectonics. Classical plate tectonic theory was developed in the 1960s. It proposed that the outer layer of our planet is made up of a small number of rigid … Read more…

The interplay of dynamic topography and eustasy on continental flooding in the late Paleozoic

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Abstract: Global sea level change can be inferred from sequence stratigraphic and continental flooding data. These methods reconstruct sea level from peri-cratonic and cratonic basins that are assumed to be tectonically stable and sometimes called reference districts, and from spatio-temporal correlations across basins. However, it has been understood that long-wavelength (typically hundreds of km) and … Read more…

Dietmar Müller presents at 2019 NSW Mining Exploration Forum on Bayesian approach for optimising the placement of new drill holes

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The 2019 NSW Mining Exploration Forum in Parliament House featured a range of talks on how to overcome to current deficit in new resource discoveries, especially in the area of metals needed for the “green economy”.  Invited talks in a session chaired by Sydney University alumna Alexandra Bonner (now Heron Resources) covered the application of … Read more…

AuScope reviews innovations of the ARC Basin Genesis HUB

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Sedimentary basins around the world are critical to sustaining modern life on Earth. These basins can be thought of as containers that hold water, minerals, energy, and can potentially be used to store carbon dioxide. Unpacking how they form, and where those resources and storage opportunities may lie is a sizeable feat for the best … Read more…

GPlates-in-schools!

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Maria Seton attended Marist College North Shore (Sydney) earlier this week and gave a presentation on “computerised simulations and models of the Earth’s geological history” to a keen group of senior science students. Part of this presentation involved leading a hands-on GPlates activity with the students (see photo). It was a hit and seeing plate … Read more…

Reflections on Earth’s geological history during Earth Hour at Sydney Observatory

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The historic Sydney Observatory provided an unrivalled view of Sydney as the city switched its lights off for Earth Hour 2019 on the 30th of March. Public talks included “Sydney Urban Wild” with WIRES campaign Manager Kristie Newton and “Reflecting on Earth” with Dietmar Müller, who built his talk around the idea that understanding the rhythms of Earth’s deep past and thinking about … Read more…

EGU Blog: Meeting Plate Tectonics – Dietmar Müller

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David Fernández-Blanco interviewed Dietmar Müller for the EGU Tectonics and Structural Geology Blog, as part of a series of interviews portraying scientists who have contributed to developing and applying plate tectonic theory over the last 50 years.  So far, this set of interviews includes Dan McKenzie, Xavier Le Pichon, Mathilde Cannat, Richard Gordon, Peter Molnar, David Bercovici, Roland … Read more…

Multi-objective Bayesian optimisation for drill site selection

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Dietmar gave an invited talk at the 2019 Future of Mining conference in Sydney, with co-authors Sebastian Haan from the Sydney Informatics Hub and Fabio Ramos from the Centre for Translational Data Science. The talk covered how Bayesian optimisation can be used to invert surface geophysical data and physical rock properties derived from drill data … Read more…