CAOG - PhD Students

Miss Birgit Nabbefeld

Synchronous disturbance in oceanic and atmospheric conditions during the end-Permian mass extinction event and its protracted recovery

Our planet's history has been punctuated by major extinction events that led to fundamental changes in the diversity and ecology of life on Earth. The end-Permian mass extinction is the most severe mass extinction in the past 500 million years. The mechanisms leading to this extinction are still widely debated. In the present project we aim to investigate various molecular fossils (biomarkers) and their isotope ratios (¹³C/¹²C and D/H) in various P/Tr boundary sections from about the globe (e.g. Western Australia, Antarctica, Japan, China, Eastern Greenland) to understand the environmental conditions (extent of anoxia) which occurred during the extinction and its protracted recovery. In addition an attempt to substantiate the notion of synchronous disturbance in oceanic and atmospheric conditions that occur across the P-Tr boundary will be established using D/H and ¹³C/¹²C of biomarkers from algal and higher plant sources, D/H and ¹³C/¹²C of carbonates and D/H and ¹³C/¹²C of kerogen, providing evidence for a switch in the mode (or extent) of organic carbon remineralisation at the P-Tr transition.

Supervisor

Professor K. Grice

Associate Supervisors

Professor R. Summons (MIT)
Dr R. Twitchett (Plymouth, UK)

Funding

ARC (Discovery) PhD stipend

CIRTS

TIGER top-up

Contact

Email B.Nabbefeld@exchange.curtin.edu.au

Tel +61 (0)8 9266 2180

Fax +61 (0)8 9266 3547