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Palynology, acritarchs and getting beyond the biostratigraphic range chart in stratigraphy

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Dates:18 October 2018
Times:17:00 - 18:00
What is it:Seminar
Organiser:Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Who is it for:University staff, Current University students
Speaker:Dr Stewart Molyneux
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  • School of Earth and Environmental Sciences

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  • In category "Seminar"
  • By Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences

This week's AAGP speaker is Dr Stewart Molyneux from the British Geological Survey.

Palynology has contributed much to hydrocarbon exploration and production including, among other things, biostratigraphic dating of sections, interpretation of environments of deposition and assessment of thermal maturity. Biostratigraphic dating relies on the determination of species’ ranges, the construction of range charts and the establishment of biozones (based on various criteria), leading to the correlation of sections. But what controls the extent of palynomorph ranges – the local originations and extinctions of species? This talk focuses on this question using a group of marine Palaeozoic palynomorphs, the acritarchs, to illustrate the development of ideas, using data from case studies in the Middle East, the English Lake District and the Welsh Borderland. Turnover in the species composition of acritarch assemblages can be linked to low order sea level changes. The exact response in any one section depends on the position of the section along the onshore-offshore gradient. So, for example, successive high diversity assemblages characterise individual Cambrian–Silurian marine flooding events on the Arabian Plate, whereas high diversity assemblages are associated with low stands in the Early Ordovician basinal succession of the Lake District in NW England. At higher orders, however, the response can be more subtle, and discerning it benefits from the application of multivariate techniques. The use of such methods, more commonly used in community ecology, adds value to biostratigraphic studies, producing insights which, when considered in conjunction with other data sets, can enhance our understanding of stratigraphic sections.

Speaker

Dr Stewart Molyneux

Role: Honorary Research Associate

Organisation: British Geological Survey

Biography: Stewart joined the British Geological Survey (BGS) after three years of research for his Ph.D., and stayed with the organisation for the rest of his career, latterly as head of the BGS team of palaeontologists. He also worked on BGS contracts with companies exploring Lower Palaeozoic targets in the Middle East (Oman, Saudi Arabia), North Africa (Algeria, Libya) and Eastern Europe (Poland, Romania). Stewart has served on the Councils of The Micropalaeontological Society and the Yorkshire Geological Society, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Geological Society,Palynology, and the Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society(including a long stint as Principal Editor), and also edited a number of sheet memoirs and other publications for the BGS.

  • https://www.bgs.ac.uk/

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2.22
Williamson Building
Manchester

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Akadyuti Sarkar

arkadyuti.sarkar@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

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