Hot Spring environments and ecosystems
Grand Prismatic hot spring - Yellowstone NP Wyoming
My research broadly focuses on hot spring ecosystems and how they become fossilised. My early research career focused on investigations of active hot springs in Yellowstone National Park where I studied the process of silicification in higher-plants. During this work it became apparent that in active hot spring areas plants are most commonly preserved in wetlands that surround most thermal areas. During the following years my work investigated these wetland areas, their plants and animals, geochemistry and fossilisation processes. Currently I am searching for fossil examples of geothermal wetlands in the 150 million year old volcanic rocks of the Deseado Massif, Argentine Patagonia.
Measuring water chemistry at Opalescent Hot Spring, Yellowstone
My research has also taken some interesting twists and turns.
A trip to Yellowstone in winter revealed a novel mechanism of silica precipitiation that operates around silica depositing springs at sub-zero temperatures around the globe. Basically, water flows from springs at boiling temperatures freezes and forms water ice that has a network of microscopic brine-channels in which silica them precipitates forming cryogenic particulate that looks a lot like fossilised microbes. Another unexpected find, a fossil coot (Fulica americana) in ancient hot spring deposits of Yellowstone, pointed to the possibility of vertebrate preservation in hot springs buy cast/mould-style preservation formed by silicification of carcass encrusting microbial mats.