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Softrock Forum

The Softrock Forum is a departmental seminar series for the discussion of work in progress at Memorial relating to soft-rock geoscience in its broadest sense.

The Forum takes place once a month from 16:00-17:00 in the last week of the month. Talks will be advertised through this website. 
We welcome everybody to our forum - come share your thoughts ideas and help the science grow.

If you are interested in giving a talk on Softrock Forum, please contact Duncan  McIlroy  
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The other half of the story – new high diversity Ediacaran populations from Charnwood Forest (UK)

on . Posted in SoftRock Forum

SoftRock Forum: Dr Phil Wilby of the British Geological Survey, Monday, August 23rd 2010, 4pm, MUN ER-3005B.

Dr Wilby is a Senior Scientific Officer at the British Geological Survey (since 1996), where he is Regional Geologist for the East Midlands Region (incl. Charnwood) and manages their Jurassic research projects; He is also a member of the Lower Palaeozoic mapping team in Wales. Prior to working in BGS he did a post-doc at Bristol Uni (with Derek Briggs) looking at mechanisms of exceptional fossil preservation, and before that a PhD at the Open University investigating the phosphatization of soft tissues in the Santana Fm (Brazil) and elsewhere. As well as his Ediacaran research, he is currently also investigating mechanisms of soft-tissue pyritization.

Dr Phil Wilby is visiting Newfoundland to study the Ediacaran fossils of the province, and will give a presentation at MUN on the latest finds from the famous Charnwood localities in England:

The other half of the story – new high diversity Ediacaran populations from Charnwood Forest (UK)

Modelling Feeding Strategies of Ediacaran Biota

on . Posted in SoftRock Forum

SoftRock Forum: Emily Mitchell of the University of Cambridge, UK, Friday, September 24th 2010, 4pm, Grad Lounge ER-4065.

Emily is a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge, UK, and is visiting Newfoundland as part of her research project.

 

Modelling Feeding Strategies of Ediacaran Biota:

The Ediacara biota are the first documented complex, macroscopic organisms on Earth. They have few similarities with modern organisms, making the ecology very difficult to assess. In order to investigate possible feeding strategies, nutrient requirements and autecologies for these organisms, I present an ecological network model for a middle Ediacaran (575-560 Ma) Avalon-type biota.


The model consists of the 12 most dominant Ediacaran species from the Avalon assemblage, microbial mats, planktonic microbes and nutrients. Fossil abundance, body size data and life history data for planktonic microbes was input into Lotka–Volterra type differential equations to describe the ecosystem dynamics. Stability of the ecosystem was derived using eigenvalues of the Jacobian community matrix and analysed in terms of feedback loops.


Osmotrophy, suspension feeding, chemosynthetic and photosynthetic strategies for the 12 Ediacaran species were considered, with each strategy having different life history traits and interspecies interactions.
It was found that the majority of non-microbe biomass must feed osmotrophically, because there is not enough energy in the system to support a large biomass of suspension feeders. Metazoans have never exhibited large scale multicellular osmotrophy, supporting the theory that Ediacaran organisms were not the precursors to modern life.