The Royal Society of Tasmania – 2015 Launceston Lecture Series
Professor Ross Large
Distinguished Professor of Geology, UTAS
will present
Variations of Nutrient Trace Elements in the Past Oceans Provides a New Explanation for Major Extinction Events
in the Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk
2.00 pm Sunday 26th April 2015
Admission: $6 General Public, $4 Friends of the Museum and Students
Free for members of The Royal Society of Tasmania
To assist us with the organization of this event
RSVP by Thursday 23rd April 2015:
Email bookings@qvmag.tas.gov.au or telephone 6323 3798
Availability of nutrients in the ocean is a major factor affecting marine life, burial of carbon and release of oxygen. However, the nutrient trace element (TE) composition of the paleo-ocean cannot be measured directly and is therefore poorly understood. In this talk I present a comprehensive global dataset on the TE content of marine sedimentary pyrite in black shales, dating back 700 million years. The data demonstrate that variations in continental uplift and erosion created a series of nutrient cycles that controlled evolution in the oceans and oxygen in the atmosphere. The cyclic patterns reveal periods of nutrient-rich oceans of 30 to 60 million years duration, followed by nutrient-poor oceans of 10 to 40 million years duration that account for several major mass extinction events.
Professor Ross Large is a Distinguished Professor of Geology at the University of Tasmania. He gained his BSc (Hons) from the University of Tasmania in 1969 and PhD from University of New England in
1973. For ten years Ross worked in mineral exploration in Northern Territory, Queensland and Tasmania. In 1984 he joined the University of Tasmania, and five years later established the Centre for Ore
Deposit and Exploration Science (CODES). Under his leadership CODES has grown to become recognized as one of the top industry collaborative ore deposit research centres in the world. Ross has over
100 publications in international journals and has gained a number of international awards for his research. His current research interests are sediment-hosted gold deposits and evolution of the chemistry
of the oceans.
