Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Stratigraphy
Machine Learning Insights into the Geochemical Life Cycle of the Columbia River Flood Basalts
Published: 2025-07-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Stratigraphy, Volcanology
Flood basalts are challenging to characterize in detail, despite enormous their erupted volumes, due to their age and chemical homogeneity. Here we explore machine learning (ML) approaches for classification and pattern identification in whole rock geochemical data of the Columbia River Flood Basalts (CRFB), which provide key constraints on magma generation, transport, and emplacement. We utilize [...]
Continental-Scale Carbonate Sedimentation and Environmental Correlates of the Shuram-Wonoka Excursion
Published: 2025-07-01
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Paleontology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Strata of the Ediacaran Period record many Earth-Life features that distinguish the Neoproterozoic-Phanerozoic transition. However, it is difficult to determine cause and effect relationships between Ediacaran events. Continental-scale patterns of sedimentation have been used as proxies to investigate controls on Phanerozoic macroevolution, including sea level drivers and potential carbon cycling [...]
Generative geomodelling: Deep Learning vs. Geostatistics
Published: 2025-06-21
Subjects: Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Generative geomodelling aims to simulate subsurface facies distributions while honoring multiple types of conditioning data and geological knowledge. This study selects three typical multiple-point statistics (MPS) approaches—Direct Sampling (DS), Quick Sampling (QS), and SNESIM—and two Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) workflows—post-GANs perturbation and GANSim—as representatives to compare [...]
Unprecedented decline in modern coral reef communities could indicate the onset of the Anthropocene
Published: 2025-06-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Geology, Geomorphology, Stratigraphy
Coral reefs have experienced widespread and accelerated decline, driven by a combination of global and local anthropogenic stressors. To contextualize these changes, we compared the composition of coral reef communities on Curaçao between 1973 and 2023 with that of corals preserved in fossil reefs from the Last Interglacial period (128–116 ka). These fossil reefs, exposed along the island’s [...]
A revised boundary between the Scoor Pelitic Gneiss and the Lagan Mòr Formation in SW Mull?
Published: 2025-05-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure
The Moine rocks of SW Mull have played a key role in our understanding of the Moine sequence in the NW Highlands. The Mull sequence was thought uniquely, to contain a continuous sedimentary sequence relating the Morar and Glenfinnan units seen elsewhere in Scotland. However, recent work by Krabbendam et al. (2021) and others, suggests that the Mull sequence does contain a major tectonic break, [...]
Volcano stratigraphy and mapping
Published: 2025-04-08
Subjects: Stratigraphy, Volcanology
Volcano-geologic mapping and stratigraphic reconstructions provide important information toward understanding patterns of edifice construction and destruction of volcanic systems, their eruptive histories and recurrence rates, and magmatic evolution and plumbing systems, all of which are required to make informed hazard assessments. Geologic mapping of volcanic terrains also provides context in [...]
Dating Oligocene-Recent siliciclastic sediment sequences from the Norwegian Sea
Published: 2025-04-05
Subjects: Stratigraphy
The Norwegian Sea is crucial for ocean circulation and global climate and has therefore long been a focus in paleoceanography. However, precise dating of sediments has often proved difficult, due to poor preservation and endemism among microfossils and the discontinuous nature of many records. One important Norwegian Sea Site, Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 643, is of particular interest, [...]
Ediacaran coupling of climate and biosphere dynamics
Published: 2025-03-14
Subjects: Climate, Glaciology, Paleontology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Throughout the Phanerozoic (538.8 Ma to present), climate change is demonstrably linked to radiations, extinctions, and turnovers in the biosphere. Here, we show that this connection existed in the late Ediacaran (~579 to 538.8 Ma), the first interval in Earth’s history to host complex macro-organisms, including early metazoans. Current correlations of glacial sedimentary deposits have been used [...]
Where has all the Sinter gone? From the Pink and White Terraces, the Greatest Tourist Attraction of the Southern Hemisphere
Published: 2025-02-02
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geology, Geomorphology, Other Geography, Paleontology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science, Stratigraphy, Volcanology
Debate continues over the silica sinter Pink and White Terraces, the greatest tourist attraction of the southern hemisphere. The 1886 Tarawera eruption may or may not have destroyed them by burial or eruption. This research compiles surviving sinter. The volume is unexpectedly tiny, which bears on the debate. A database was developed including photography. A forensic approach was taken to [...]
A New Interpretation of Ptolemy's Germania Magna: Employing Computer-Assisted Image Distortion of a Medieval Map by Donnus Nicolaus Germanus to Examine Post-Glacial Geodynamics in Europe
Published: 2025-02-02
Subjects: Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Nature and Society Relations, Other Astrophysics and Astronomy, Other Earth Sciences, Other Geography, Other Planetary Sciences, Planetary Geology, Planetary Geomorphology, Planetary Geophysics and Seismology, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure, The Sun and the Solar System
This paper revisits Claudius Ptolemy's depiction of Germania Magna through a multidisciplinary approach, integrating computer-aided distortion analysis of Donnus Nicolaus Germanus's medieval cartography with geological insights. The study proposes that the region underwent significant and complex transformations, likely influenced by tectonic activity, such as the reactivation of the Caledonian [...]
Stratigraphic influence on emplacement and 3-dimensional structure of a large mafic sill in sedimentary strata
Published: 2025-01-31
Subjects: Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology
Sills are fundamental elements of volcanic plumbing systems emplaced, among other, in sedimentary basins. Even though sills are commonly considered simple, straight concordant igneous sheets, they are actually complex 3-dimensional objects. The detailed knowledge of the 3D structure of sills and their host rock is of primary relevance to better constraining the emplacement mechanisms and the [...]
Transtension in the Levant Basin: Challenging the Syrian Arc model
Published: 2025-01-09
Subjects: Geology, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure
Late Cretaceous intra-plate shortening, and inversion of the Permian to Jurassic rift system, resulted in the ~1000 km-long, S-shaped Syrian Arc Fold Belt which dominates the Levant regional topography through Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. Subsequent Miocene folding along the same trends of the Late Cretaceous fold belt, was likely associated with the collision of Arabia and Eurasia. The [...]
Cambrian foreland phosphogenesis in the Khuvsgul Basin of Mongolia
Published: 2024-12-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure
Ediacaran-Cambrian phosphorite deposits in northern Mongolia have been associated with a putative increase in nutrient delivery to the global oceans that drove oxygenation and the rise of animals. However, like many phosphorites from this ~130 Myr interval, the precise age and depositional setting of these deposits remain poorly constrained. Here, we integrate new geological mapping, [...]
Challenging the turbidity current maximum run-up height paradigm
Published: 2024-12-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Fluid Dynamics, Geology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
Turbidity currents are a primary mechanism for transporting sediments, pollutants, and organic carbon into the deep ocean. They are strongly influenced by seafloor topography because of their relative bulk density and associated gravitational influence being 3-4 orders of magnitude smaller than in terrestrial systems. Marked run-up of turbidity currents on slopes poses a hazard to seafloor [...]
Oligocene – Miocene Tectono-Stratigraphic Development of the Southern Levant Basin, Eastern Mediterranean
Published: 2024-11-20
Subjects: Geology, Stratigraphy, Tectonics and Structure
The Levant Basin, Eastern Mediterranean, has a complex geological history. The separation of Africa from Arabia, and the collision of the latter with Eurasia during the Oligocene – Miocene had significant implications for the tectono-stratigraphy of the region, as recorded in the thick, siliciclastic-dominated sequence preserved in the Levant Basin. Previous studies mostly focused on either [...]