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<< back to Faculty Paleontology, Sedimentology and Stratigraphy |
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Paleontological and sedimentological
studies at the University of Missouri are broad and interdisciplinary.
Faculty and students are using traditional and novel techniques to address
problems ranging from regional and global correlation, to paleobiology
and mass extinctions, to stratigraphic and sedimentological controls on
subduction zone seismicity, to black shales. These projects address samples
ranging in age from the modern to the Precambrian. Achieving research
goals is facilitated by the broad range of analytical
tools and expertise available in the department to characterize the
fossil content, mineralogy, chemistry, and isotopic composition of samples
being studied. Field work figures prominently in most projects. Missouri's
cratonic setting notwithstanding, faculty and students routinely go to
sea, and land-based studies include work in North America as well as recent
work on four other continents. |
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At the physical/tectonic end of the spectrum, sediments accumulating on submarine fans, in trenches, and being incorporated in accretionary prisms are influenced by regional-scale patterns of dispersal for both sand and clay-sized sediment and the climate and tectonics in the source region. The propagation of and movement along faults in subduction zones, in turn, is influenced by the nature of the sediments in the accretionary prism and the diagenetic changes they undergo as they move into the subduction zone. Thus, large subduction zone earthquakes may be controlled in part by clay mineralology and clay diagenesis. Funded projects are investigating these possibilities in the Nankai trough and Cascadia subduction zone.
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