SAND(er)S OF Time Laboratory
PI • Cecilia B. Sanders, PhD
Welcome to the
ime
laboratory
^er
Neogenesis is a term for the growth of new minerals after or during the deposition of sediments. It is the process responsible for most fossilization, when it occurs faster than organic remains decay. Neogenetic crystals themselves can also be records of life-environment interactions, incorporating trace elements and organic matter, fractionated populations of molecules, etc.
eogenesis
The fossil record is like a well-loved storybook. The contents --- body fossils, trace fossils, geochemical signatures, structures created by the interactions between organic matter and sediments --- tell the tale. But so too do the missing pages, marginalia, scratches, water damage, annotations from different readers in different inks... The fossil record has undergone many episodes of chemical and physical reworking; it has its own gaps and marginalia that tell their story, too!
ossil records
estruction
Destruction of the geologic record and loss of information about the past occurs by many pathways. However, the nature and extent of information loss can reveal new insights about process and environmental transition. Destruction is as important to "taphonomy" as preservation.
Survival of information about past life, environment, and ecological relationships depends on many factors.
Consider a sea slug. Information about that sea slug's diet and behaviors is locked up in the isotopic composition of its tissues, the diversity of the bacterial symbiotes in its digestive tract, the morphology of the burrows it may construct for its eggs. Lots of events have to happen in just the right sequence if any of that information is going to survive the slug's death, burial, decay, etc. Environmental chemistry, sedimentation, and microbial activity are among the most important determinants.
urvival
What is a record? It's a means of preserving information about something that happened at some point in time now in the past.
Why do we use records? Because understanding the past helps us interpret the present and make predictions for the future.
Because rocks can incorporate information about life and the environment during their formation and modification, as well as information about the absolute and relative timing of that information, we can use them as a geologic record. The time dimension is an important part of our research!
ime
What does life do? Life eats, life grows, life proliferates, life catalyzes chemical reactions that wouldn't otherwise occur in nature. Life can even aid in its own preservation in the fossil record, through the secretion of hard parts or the inducement of crystal growth in and around cells --- under specialized conditions!
Biological
ctivity.
The transport, deposition, and accumulation of sediments create the geologic record of life and the environment. Some of these processes are purely physical, like the wind or the rain. Others are biological: burrowing, the adhesion of sediments to biofilms, the growth of shells and bones that become clasts and grains, etc. Sedimentology is the study of all of those processes and the kinds of records they create. There is fascinating information about the past in the size, shape, and composition of every grain --- and in its spatial relationship to other grains.
edimentary processes
Sanders Lab for the study of Sedimentary processes,
biological Activity &
Neogenesis effecting Destruction and
Survival
Of
Fossil records through
Time
or the
