GEOLOGY & GEOPHYSICS NEWS Yale University I Department of Geology and Geophysics Fall 2012 Chairman’s Letter Jay Ague ([email protected]) This is an exciting period of transition here in Geology and Geophysics. We are sad to bid farewell to outgoing Chair, Dave Bercovici, but are truly grateful for his inspirational leadership over the past six years. We wish Dave all the best as he takes a much- deserved one-year leave, and Peabody Museum Installs a “Cretaceous look forward to his return to Garden” daily departmental life in 2013. Thanks Dave! As you read through this issue of our newsletter, The past year saw the completion of the first phase I think you’ll be impressed by the growing breadth in the installation of Yale Peabody Museum’s and vigor of G&G’s activities. Our students, postdocs, “Cretaceous Garden” exhibit, overseen by G&G and faculty continue to receive numerous national Professor and Museum Curator Leo Hickey. The and international accolades—you can read all about garden extends for nearly 150 feet along the Whitney the details inside. This recognition is a testament Avenue side of the Peabody Museum and Kline to G&G’s ever-expanding global influence. And Geology Building and features a life-size statue speaking of faculty successes, I am delighted to let of Torosaurus, a relative of Triceratops, as well as you know that Alexey Fedorov has been promoted a simulated dinosaur track-way along its center to Professor (with tenure). Congratulations, Alexey! pathway and some 40 species of trees, shrubs and You will also read about the incredible things your herbaceous plants belonging to Cretaceous genera fellow alums have been up to. Learn of Afghanistan’s or species. mineral resources, invaluable fossil remains The garden was conceived as an outdoor extension unearthed accidentally at construction sites, and so and introduction to Peabody’s Great Hall of Dinosaurs much more. And please keep sending us your alumni so that visitors could get the idea of the size and news items so that we can feature them in future dynamics of some of the plant and animal players newsletters. on the Cretaceous landscape. Visitors traverse what Our educational programs are experiencing a is meant to represent a Cetaceous glade following renaissance of new growth. Last year we taught the tracks of a young Acrocanthosaurus, a meat- continued on page 2 about 540 undergraduates which, with two isolated exceptions, is the largest number since the mid- Inside this Issue 1970s! We are projecting about 25 junior and senior majors in the coming few years, many more than Faculty Research . 3 we have had for well over a decade. Encouragingly, Field Studies . 6 this positive trend shows no signs of slowing Field Trips . .10 down. The graduate program has grown at an Visiting Faculty . .12 unprecedented rate such that more than 60 students Recent Awards and Honors: Faculty . 13 are in residence—by far the largest group in recent Recent Awards and Honors: Students . 15 memory. And our postdocs now number into the Student News . 16 thirties. I am also delighted to report an increase in G&G Postdoc News . 17 field-trip activities (see p. 10). This flourishing interest in G&G no doubt reflects Recent Awards and Honors: Alumni . 18 continued on page 2 Alumni News . 19 GeoloGy & Geophysics News Fall 2012 Letter continued from page 1 and outreach, now is the time to act! We have made our vigorous, multidisciplinary approach to science it easier than ever to contribute by putting a new and burgeoning student interest in energy, climate, “Donate” link on our website: http://earth.yale.edu. and our revitalized field programs.Mark Brandon’s If you prefer to use the mail then that of course is field-based project in The Apennines, featured perfectly fine too—you’ll find a mail-in gift form on herein, is just one example of how our faculty page 26 of this newsletter. These funds will help in and their research groups are pushing back the myriad ways, including support of undergraduate and boundaries of knowledge around the globe. Mark graduate students and their research (including field Pagani has been named the new Director of the Yale work), and support of vital collegial activities such as Climate and Energy Institute (YCEI), and G&G alum departmental field trips. And as you visit our website, Mike Oristaglio is the new Executive Director. These note the new front page “Department News” feature exciting new appointments will ensure that G&G will complete with pictures and in-depth stories that give be at the heart of climate and energy science at Yale insight into all that goes on here in G&G! for years to come. Please come and visit us here in New Haven—we The rapid growth that our department has would love to see you! During your stay, make sure to experienced, however, has brought new challenges. check out the new “Cretaceous Garden” installed by Our expansion, coinciding as it has with the global the Peabody Museum. This effort, led by Leo Hickey, financial downturn, is now putting enormous strains recreates a Cretaceous glade and includes more on our budget. If you have ever thought of helping than forty species of plants with ancient lineages G&G maintain its excellence in teaching, research, stretching back over the past 65 million years. sunnier spots at the edge of the woods. Here and there the clearing is dotted with the trunks of an extinct group of plants called cycadeoids, which were probably crowded out in such open habitats by the rapidly proliferating flowering plants. The label for each species of plant features an illustration of its fossil precursor, a short discussion of the geological history of the lineage, and some information about its present distribution and conservation status. Unfortunately, some of these plants, whose ancestors survived the asteroid impact that exterminated the dinosaurs and much of the rest of Cretaceous life, are critically endangered in our modern world. One of the constraints in the design of the garden Peabody continued from page 1 arises because the climate of the world during the eating theropod dinosaur related to Tyrannosaurus. Cretaceous was much warmer than that of present- Interpretative signs tell the viewers how they can day Connecticut. Thus, while the exhibit’s planners estimate how fast this predator walked across the would like to have included palms and cycads (not glade as it adjusted its gait to avoid an encounter to be confused with cycadeoids) in the garden, the with the much larger Torosaurus. A plaza of ripple- harsh reality of our winters prevent this, at least for marked sandstone blocks, quarried in Arizona a century or two. However, the garden does include especially for this exhibit, allows visitors to gather on many beautiful and unusual specimens such as the what was once a river sandbar to view the Torosaurus golden larch of China, the big tree (Sequoiadendron) statue that is the garden’s centerpiece. of California, five species of Magnolia, the tulip tree, Thus far, over 40 species of plants, ranging from and the Methuselah of them all, the ginkgo, whose ferns, to conifers, to early flowering plants have single living species appears unchanged from the been planted in the garden to represent a woodland Cretaceous Period, over 65 million years ago. The clearing and the forest that surrounded it. As they department cordially invites the readers of this did during the Cretaceous Period, conifers make up newsletter to view this “taste of the Cretaceous” on the majority of trees in the forest that surrounds the your next visit to Yale. glade, with the flowering plants mostly occupying —Leo J. Hickey ([email protected]) 2 GeoloGy & Geophysics News Fall 2012 Faculty research Active Tectonics at Yale actually accidents of geologic history. Mark Brandon So the second ([email protected]) task is to resolve The study of tectonics at Yale the controls and started with James Dwight variables in these Dana, whose research included experiments, the structure and evolution of which is done mountain belts. But Chester mainly by Longwell and John Rodgers, who synthesis of joined the faculty in 1920 and 1946, existing geological respectively, initiated the modern and geophysical era of tectonics research at Yale. studies, but also with own studies, Figure 1. Mark Brandon at the “Beach”, which is the lab we use for Their work emphasized field-based running experiments using deforming sand to study growth and studies, and their papers and books as needed. erosion of mountain belts. made fundamental contributions The third task to understanding thrust belts is to analyze the experiment to and many other scientists outside in the southwest Cordillera and understand its larger scientific of Yale. In this article, I will provide Appalachians. relevance.I have been fortunate to a summary of our most recent work The field of tectonics has work in many areas over the last 26 in the Apennines and also some broadened over the years and years while at Yale, including the lab experiments were have been has benefited by growth in the Olympic Mountains in Washington doing using sand to model tectonic Department in the areas of State, Kamchatka in the Russian deformation (Figure 1). petrology, geochemistry, and Far East, the South Island of geophysics. About a year ago, New Zealand, the Swiss Alps, the RETREAT Project in the North we set up a new group called island of Crete, the Apennines Apennines Lithosphere and Surface Processes. of Italy, and most recently, the Starting in 2002, I was lead The idea is to capitalize on Patagonian Andes.