How and when did thick, cool keels of lithospheric mantle first underpin Earth's cratons? How and when did Earth's continental crust form and evolve? What geodynamic regimes were operating in the Archaean?

These are the fundamental questions my PhD research aims to help address. My work is focused on the Slave Craton, NW Canada, and utilised Mesoarchaean aged (>2.83 Ga) detrital diamonds to examine the Archaean mantle and Palaeo-Eoarchaean (>3.2 Ga) zircons in gneisses to investigate Earth's early continental crust. 

Left: Two of the detrital microdiamonds exhibiting subduction-like isotopic signatures and radiohalos from their residence in Archaean-aged sediments.

How are giant dykes several hundred metres wide emplaced and how do they subsequently evolve? 

I mapped the northern limb of the Younger Giant Dyke Complex (YGDC) on Tuttutooq Island, S Greenland for my undergraduate mapping project and performed an Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS) study to quantify the magnetic fabrics within an evolved domain of the dyke for my Master's dissertation. We found a canoe-like morphology in the magnetic fabrics within the central Assorutit evolved domain and evidence for multiple emplacement episodes which reorientated the outer magnetic fabrics. 

The map was published in GEUS Bulletin in 2021: 

Left Top: Map I created over 6 weeks of the northern limb of the YGDC on NE Tuttutooq island, S Greenland. 

Left Bottom: Model of emplacement mechanisms and evolution of YGDC at Assorutit on Tuttutooq Island. 

For my Laidlaw Undergraduate Leadership and Research Scholarship, I developed a project that looked for evidence of biomineralising life in 3.47-billion-year-old (Ga) sediments in the Barberton Greenstone Belt (BGB), South Africa. Working with Dr. Tim Raub (University of St Andrews), Dr Rosalie Tostevin (University of Cape Town), and Prof. Joseph Kirschvink (Caltech) we found potential rock magnetic evidence for Magnetotactic Bacteria, the oldest evidence of biomineralising life on Earth. 

Left: Slice of rock collected from the 3.47 Ga Middle Marker, BGB, South Africa. The top of the section has exquisitely preserved lapilli tuff, overlying volcaniclastic sediments and black cherts. Magnetic evidence for Magnetotactic Bacteria is found within this chert horizon.