Atlantic Coastal Plain Paleontology and Stratigraphy: Most of Prof. Bailey’s Atlantic Coastal Plain paleontology, sedimentology, and stratigraphy research involves strata and abundant molluscan fossils from the Chesapeake Group of Virginia and North Carolina, especially the Pliocene Yorktown and Chowan River Formations. He is particularly interested in the types of changes that occur in paleocommunities over times ranging from hundreds to millions of years. Prof. Bailey also studies Paleogene nautiloids, taxonomy and taphonomy of decapod crustaceans with a colleague from the Smithsonian, and Neogene coral thickets in Virginia and North Carolina. The coral thickets represent an extinct type of community that lived on the shallow Atlantic continental shelf until a regional mass extinction near the end of the Pliocene. Prof. Baileys is currently analyzing several fossil coral thickets and comparing their function and development to living coral thickets. In support of this project he is also studying the morphology and systematics of common coral species on the Coastal Plain.
Avalon Terrane of Southeastern New England: Over the past three decades Prof. Bailey has studied all of the major sedimentary sequences found in the exotic Avalon terrane of New England. Most of this work has been with the sedimentary rocks of the Neoproterozoic Westboro Formation and Boston Bay Group and several Cambrian units. A major effort involves the analysis of sandstones within the Avalon terrane, and mapping and study of fossiliferous strata at Nahant, MA and related localities. This work has led to detailed syntheses of depositional history and comparisons with the type Avalon in Newfoundland.
The famous Squantum “Tillite” continues to be the focus of much work and Prof. Bailey is the primary and outspoken advocate for the non-glacial origin of this supposed glacial deposit. This research has become timely because some geologists think that the Squantum glacial(?) event marks the last of the snowball Earth events in Earth history.
Prof. Bailey recently mapped the southern margin of the Boston Basin from Quincy to Hingham, MA and studied most of the classic stratigraphic sections. He is working with a colleague from the United Kingdom describing a new and unique early Ediacaran fossil from these strata in addition to reconstructing the depositional and environmental conditions of the sedimentary rocks containing the fossils. They have discovered unusual microbial or biomat structures in these strata and continue to study the bedrock geology of the southern Boston Harbor Islands. Prof. Bailey recently completed a detailed bedrock geologic map of Slate and Grape Islands.
Living Mollusks and Modern Taphonomy: Prof. Bailey studies modern marine and estuarine invertebrate species and communities to support his paleontological research. A current project involved SCUBA diving to examine living scallops in Nantucket Harbor. He discovered that contrary to expectation some nektobenthic creatures (animals that live on the bottom but swim around, like scallops) tend to have more attached animals on the bottom of the living animals, in this case the bay scallop, than on the top. For more than 100 years paleontologists interpreted the life position of extinct animals based on the surface of the shell that was most densely covered with attached animals, turns out that rule is not always correct.
Tropical Limestones and Fossil Reefs: Prof. Bailey is currently studying the stratigraphy and sedimentology of rocks in a deep borehole on Grand Bahama Island in the Bahamas. The hole was drilled by a colleague and NU Geology alum Lloyd Cheong. This is an important borehole because deep holes are rare in the Bahamas and this is the deepest yet drilled (nearly 600 feet) on the Little Bahama Bank. In addition, Prof. Bailey takes students to the Bahamas on many occasions to study modern reefs and carbonate environments and their fossil and ancient equivalents. Many small research projects, often involving students, and related to my larger efforts have resulted from these trips.
Origin of dropstones in the Boston Bay Group: Professor Bailey has been mapping and looking at these features in detail. Previous workers interpreted these dropstones as indicators of a glacial marine origin. Professor Bailey is using modern sedimentary facies analysis to provide an alternative and modern view of the origin of these features and this important stratigraphic unit in the Boston area.
Columbia River Flood Basalts: Professor Ross, in collaboration with Dr. Victor Camp of San Diego State University, has been conducting an extensive field and geochemical investigation of Columbia River Basalts and related volcanics in the Pacific Northwest since 1997. Based on their findings, Ross and Camp have published a new map extending the Columbia River Basalts much farther south than previously believed, increasing their known area of exposure by 53,000 km2 and their volume by 31,800 km3.
Mantle Plume Controversy: : In recent years, the existence of mantle plumes, long believed to be responsible for isolated hot spot volcanism such as the Hawaiian Islands, has been challenged by some geologists who claim that hot spots can be explained by other means such as volcanism along propagating fractures in the lithosphere. As the youngest and most studied of the great flood basalt provinces, the Miocene Columbia River Basalts are viewed as a test of these opposing views. Ross and Camp’s research strongly supports the presence of a large mantle plume beneath southeastern Oregon about 17 million years ago that was responsible for the eruption of the Columbia River Basalts. A summary of this and other work on this controversy can be viewed at www.mantleplumes.org.
Mafic dike swarms in New England: Professor Ross is continuing his long term investigation of the petrology, age, and tectonics of Proterozoic to Mesozoic mafic dike swarms of the Avalon terrane in southeastern New England, coastal Massachusetts in particular. So far Professor Ross has been able to distinguish several different dike swarms of vastly different ages among the thousands of dikes in eastern Massachusetts on the basis of field characteristics, geochemical compositions, mineralogy, and a few radiometric ages. The ultimate goal of this research is to establish the magmatic and tectonic history of the dikes and sills in the region.
Chemical and mineralogic trends within individual dikes: In addition to the broader study of mafic dike swarms, Professor Ross also continues to study the nature and origin of chemical and mineralogic trends within individual mafic dikes. Professor Ross was one of the first to document the effects of flow differentiation on compositional trends across individual dikes.
Porter Square Camptonite dike: An unusual, 2.4 meter thick dike was briefly exposed during the excavation of the Porter Square Red Line subway station in 1981. This dike contains an incredibly large number of crystals (i.e. megacrysts) of a variety of minerals as well as small xenoliths of ultramafic rocks torn loose from the upper mantle and lower crust by the magma as it explosively rose to the surface at high velocity. As a result, this dike affords the opportunity to derive invaluable information about the mantle present beneath the region some 246 million years ago.
Professor Ross has thus far determined the mineralogic compositions of the dike host and the megacrysts and xenoliths using microscopic techniques, whole-rock chemical analyses, and electron microprobe analysis of dozens of samples. Recently, he has confirmed the age of the dike to be 246 + 4 million years (http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/ag/issue/archive).
Groundwater Chemistry of the Lake Agassiz Peatlands, Northern Minnesota: Looking at long term geochemistry as it pertains to global climate change and natural wetland fluctuary.
Groundwater Levels and Quality in Back Bay, MA: Professor Cole monitors water quality and movement of contaminates. Prof. Cole also monitors groundwater fluctuations due to construction excavation, and long term groundwater fluctuations which can affect the stability of foundations for existing buildings.
Using CT to Evaulate the Dual Porosity Nature of Peat: Professor Cole uses Computed Tomography (CT) scans to distinguish pore spaces filled with water or gas from cellular water in humified peat and to determine how pore spaces change in response to the movement of Cl- bearing solution and gas.
Evolution of Boston Harbor Islands: Professor Rosen is developing a model for the evolution of Boston Harbor Island shorelines in response to rising sealevels. Processes of bluff retreat, accretionary landforms, such as tombolos and salients, and the influence of pre-existing topography are being evaluated to understand why islands have their present forms. A previous study of stratigraphy of the harbor-bottom sediments was carried out through excavations in the landfilled areas of downtown Boston, which lead to a history of changes in the harbor as water levels increases. This study also provided an understanding of the setting of the Boylston Street fishweir, a Native American archaeological within the city. This year, another phase of the harbor studies was initiated cooperatively with Boston University Coastal Research Group to study boat wakes in the harbor and their influence on the shoreline.
Coastal geomorphology and piping plover habitat near Duxbury Beach: Professor Rosen is mapping different ecological and geological zones and relating them to bird habitat. He is using a GIS to organize and analyze the mapping data. He is also working in cooperation with researchers at Boston University who are doing ground penetrating radar to determine the stratigraphy of the barrier complex. For a MS Powerpoint presentation of findings so far, check out Duxbury Beach.
Professor Govindarajan also holds a position as a Research Associate at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Her interests include the evolution, ecology, species diversity, and biogeography of marine invertebrates, focusing on the Hydrozoa (Cnidaria) and Thaliacea (Chordata). Currently she is working with Larry Madin (WHOI) and Ann Bucklin (University of Connecticut) on a phylogeny of the Thaliacea, which is a group of planktonic marine chordates, and developing DNA “barcodes” for thaliacean species identification.
Faculty Research
Richard H. Bailey
Atlantic Coastal Plain Paleontology and Stratigraphy: Most of Prof. Bailey’s Atlantic Coastal Plain paleontology, sedimentology, and stratigraphy research involves strata and abundant molluscan fossils from the Chesapeake Group of Virginia and North Carolina, especially the Pliocene Yorktown and Chowan River Formations. He is particularly interested in the types of changes that occur in paleocommunities over times ranging from hundreds to millions of years. Prof. Bailey also studies Paleogene nautiloids, taxonomy and taphonomy of decapod crustaceans with a colleague from the Smithsonian, and Neogene coral thickets in Virginia and North Carolina. The coral thickets represent an extinct type of community that lived on the shallow Atlantic continental shelf until a regional mass extinction near the end of the Pliocene. Prof. Baileys is currently analyzing several fossil coral thickets and comparing their function and development to living coral thickets. In support of this project he is also studying the morphology and systematics of common coral species on the Coastal Plain.
Avalon Terrane of Southeastern New England: Over the past three decades Prof. Bailey has studied all of the major sedimentary sequences found in the exotic Avalon terrane of New England. Most of this work has been with the sedimentary rocks of the Neoproterozoic Westboro Formation and Boston Bay Group and several Cambrian units. A major effort involves the analysis of sandstones within the Avalon terrane, and mapping and study of fossiliferous strata at Nahant, MA and related localities. This work has led to detailed syntheses of depositional history and comparisons with the type Avalon in Newfoundland.
The famous Squantum “Tillite” continues to be the focus of much work and Prof. Bailey is the primary and outspoken advocate for the non-glacial origin of this supposed glacial deposit. This research has become timely because some geologists think that the Squantum glacial(?) event marks the last of the snowball Earth events in Earth history.
Prof. Bailey recently mapped the southern margin of the Boston Basin from Quincy to Hingham, MA and studied most of the classic stratigraphic sections. He is working with a colleague from the United Kingdom describing a new and unique early Ediacaran fossil from these strata in addition to reconstructing the depositional and environmental conditions of the sedimentary rocks containing the fossils. They have discovered unusual microbial or biomat structures in these strata and continue to study the bedrock geology of the southern Boston Harbor Islands. Prof. Bailey recently completed a detailed bedrock geologic map of Slate and Grape Islands.
Living Mollusks and Modern Taphonomy: Prof. Bailey studies modern marine and estuarine invertebrate species and communities to support his paleontological research. A current project involved SCUBA diving to examine living scallops in Nantucket Harbor. He discovered that contrary to expectation some nektobenthic creatures (animals that live on the bottom but swim around, like scallops) tend to have more attached animals on the bottom of the living animals, in this case the bay scallop, than on the top. For more than 100 years paleontologists interpreted the life position of extinct animals based on the surface of the shell that was most densely covered with attached animals, turns out that rule is not always correct.
Tropical Limestones and Fossil Reefs: Prof. Bailey is currently studying the stratigraphy and sedimentology of rocks in a deep borehole on Grand Bahama Island in the Bahamas. The hole was drilled by a colleague and NU Geology alum Lloyd Cheong. This is an important borehole because deep holes are rare in the Bahamas and this is the deepest yet drilled (nearly 600 feet) on the Little Bahama Bank. In addition, Prof. Bailey takes students to the Bahamas on many occasions to study modern reefs and carbonate environments and their fossil and ancient equivalents. Many small research projects, often involving students, and related to my larger efforts have resulted from these trips.
Origin of dropstones in the Boston Bay Group: Professor Bailey has been mapping and looking at these features in detail. Previous workers interpreted these dropstones as indicators of a glacial marine origin. Professor Bailey is using modern sedimentary facies analysis to provide an alternative and modern view of the origin of these features and this important stratigraphic unit in the Boston area.
Martin E. Ross
Columbia River Flood Basalts: Professor Ross, in collaboration with Dr. Victor Camp of San Diego State University, has been conducting an extensive field and geochemical investigation of Columbia River Basalts and related volcanics in the Pacific Northwest since 1997. Based on their findings, Ross and Camp have published a new map extending the Columbia River Basalts much farther south than previously believed, increasing their known area of exposure by 53,000 km2 and their volume by 31,800 km3.
Mantle Plume Controversy: : In recent years, the existence of mantle plumes, long believed to be responsible for isolated hot spot volcanism such as the Hawaiian Islands, has been challenged by some geologists who claim that hot spots can be explained by other means such as volcanism along propagating fractures in the lithosphere. As the youngest and most studied of the great flood basalt provinces, the Miocene Columbia River Basalts are viewed as a test of these opposing views. Ross and Camp’s research strongly supports the presence of a large mantle plume beneath southeastern Oregon about 17 million years ago that was responsible for the eruption of the Columbia River Basalts. A summary of this and other work on this controversy can be viewed at www.mantleplumes.org.
Mafic dike swarms in New England: Professor Ross is continuing his long term investigation of the petrology, age, and tectonics of Proterozoic to Mesozoic mafic dike swarms of the Avalon terrane in southeastern New England, coastal Massachusetts in particular. So far Professor Ross has been able to distinguish several different dike swarms of vastly different ages among the thousands of dikes in eastern Massachusetts on the basis of field characteristics, geochemical compositions, mineralogy, and a few radiometric ages. The ultimate goal of this research is to establish the magmatic and tectonic history of the dikes and sills in the region.
Chemical and mineralogic trends within individual dikes: In addition to the broader study of mafic dike swarms, Professor Ross also continues to study the nature and origin of chemical and mineralogic trends within individual mafic dikes. Professor Ross was one of the first to document the effects of flow differentiation on compositional trends across individual dikes.
Porter Square Camptonite dike: An unusual, 2.4 meter thick dike was briefly exposed during the excavation of the Porter Square Red Line subway station in 1981. This dike contains an incredibly large number of crystals (i.e. megacrysts) of a variety of minerals as well as small xenoliths of ultramafic rocks torn loose from the upper mantle and lower crust by the magma as it explosively rose to the surface at high velocity. As a result, this dike affords the opportunity to derive invaluable information about the mantle present beneath the region some 246 million years ago.
Professor Ross has thus far determined the mineralogic compositions of the dike host and the megacrysts and xenoliths using microscopic techniques, whole-rock chemical analyses, and electron microprobe analysis of dozens of samples. Recently, he has confirmed the age of the dike to be 246 + 4 million years (http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/ag/issue/archive).
Jennifer Cole
Groundwater Chemistry of the Lake Agassiz Peatlands, Northern Minnesota: Looking at long term geochemistry as it pertains to global climate change and natural wetland fluctuary.
Groundwater Levels and Quality in Back Bay, MA: Professor Cole monitors water quality and movement of contaminates. Prof. Cole also monitors groundwater fluctuations due to construction excavation, and long term groundwater fluctuations which can affect the stability of foundations for existing buildings.
Using CT to Evaulate the Dual Porosity Nature of Peat: Professor Cole uses Computed Tomography (CT) scans to distinguish pore spaces filled with water or gas from cellular water in humified peat and to determine how pore spaces change in response to the movement of Cl- bearing solution and gas.
Peter Rosen
Evolution of Boston Harbor Islands: Professor Rosen is developing a model for the evolution of Boston Harbor Island shorelines in response to rising sealevels. Processes of bluff retreat, accretionary landforms, such as tombolos and salients, and the influence of pre-existing topography are being evaluated to understand why islands have their present forms. A previous study of stratigraphy of the harbor-bottom sediments was carried out through excavations in the landfilled areas of downtown Boston, which lead to a history of changes in the harbor as water levels increases. This study also provided an understanding of the setting of the Boylston Street fishweir, a Native American archaeological within the city. This year, another phase of the harbor studies was initiated cooperatively with Boston University Coastal Research Group to study boat wakes in the harbor and their influence on the shoreline.
Coastal geomorphology and piping plover habitat near Duxbury Beach: Professor Rosen is mapping different ecological and geological zones and relating them to bird habitat. He is using a GIS to organize and analyze the mapping data. He is also working in cooperation with researchers at Boston University who are doing ground penetrating radar to determine the stratigraphy of the barrier complex. For a MS Powerpoint presentation of findings so far, check out Duxbury Beach.
Annette Govindarajan
Professor Govindarajan also holds a position as a Research Associate at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Her interests include the evolution, ecology, species diversity, and biogeography of marine invertebrates, focusing on the Hydrozoa (Cnidaria) and Thaliacea (Chordata). Currently she is working with Larry Madin (WHOI) and Ann Bucklin (University of Connecticut) on a phylogeny of the Thaliacea, which is a group of planktonic marine chordates, and developing DNA “barcodes” for thaliacean species identification.