The opening of the Equatorial Atlantic Ocean constitutes the final stage of Gondwana’s breakup, leading to the separation of the African and South American continents. The early spreading has been debated due to the absence of magnetic anomalies related to the Early Cretaceous opening at low latitude, and an incomplete fracture zone record, hidden by … Read more…
Deep-sea carbonates constitute the primary deep carbon reservoir, playing a critical role in regulating the long-term global carbon cycle. Reconstructing the temporal evolution of carbonate flux to the seafloor requires estimating the changes in carbonate compensation depth (CCD), a key proxy, revealing the depth where the rate of calcium carbonate supply from biogenic ooze equals … Read more…
Oceanic seafloor is scarred by age discontinuities, seamounts, and large igneous provinces (LIPs) over normal bathymetry. The recycling of these seafloor anomalies has been speculated to alter subduction regimes which may locally prime some regions for porphyry copper deposit formation. Using a tectonic plate reconstruction encompassing the last 100 Ma paired with a machine learning classifier … Read more…
The fossil record shows a prominent 60 million-year biodiversity cycle during the Phanerozoic Eon, the origin of which is still unknown. Here we use time-series analysis and correlation of empirical and model datasets of Earth’s interior and sur cial processes to demonstrate that this cycle is a pervasive feature in marine animal genus-level diversity data … Read more…
Traditional geological mapping methods, which rely on field observations and rock sample analysis, are inefficient for continuous spatial mapping of geological features such as alteration zones. Deep learning models such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have ushered in a transformative era in remote sensing data analysis. CNNs excel in automatically extracting features from image data … Read more…
Supervised machine learning methods for geological mapping via remote sensing face limitations due to the scarcity of accurately labelled training data that can be addressed by unsupervised learning, such as dimensionality reduction and clustering. Dimensionality reduction methods have the potential to play a crucial role in improving the accuracy of geological maps. Although conventional dimensionality … Read more…
Magnetic observations from the oceans have made fundamental contributions to our knowledge of plate motions and the evolution of the geomagnetic field over the past ∼200 Myr. Here we construct updated models of magnetization for the oceanic lithosphere, taking advantage of the most recent models for Earth’s past plate motions. We then evaluate these models using … Read more…
Quantitative analysis of crustal thickness evolution across deep time poses critical insights into the planet’s geological history. It may help uncover new areas with potential critical mineral deposits and reveal the impacts of crustal thickness and elevation changes on the development of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. However, most existing estimation methods are restricted to … Read more…
Abstract. The discovery of new economic copper deposits is critical for the development of renewable energy infrastructure and zero-emissions transport. The majority of existing copper mines are located within current or extinct continental arc systems, but our understanding of the tectonic and geodynamic conditions favoring the formation of porphyry systems is still incomplete. Traditionally, exploration … Read more…
The Phanerozoic climate has been interrupted by two long “icehouse” intervals, including the current icehouse of the last ~34 million years. While these cool intervals correspond to lower atmospheric CO2, it is unclear why CO2 levels fell, with hypotheses suggesting changes in CO2 degassing rates or modification of silicate weathering through changing continental lithology or paleogeography. Here, … Read more…
The common spatial and temporal association of calk alkaline lamprophyres with orogenic gold deposits has been recognized for more than a century, although interpretations regarding the significance of this association have varied greatly. A persistent lack of consensus on Archean geodynamics and the deposits themselves presented a challenge to the use of a Mineral Systems … Read more…
pide is a Python library for calculating geophysical parameters (e.g., electrical conductivity, seismic velocity), employing the results from experimental petrology, mineral/rock physics, and thermomechanical modelling studies. pide can calculate the theoretical electrical conductivity of any Earth material that exists in the literature. pide can also calculate seismic velocity utilising the external ‘sister’ library SAnTex. Using … Read more…