Thermochronology, Geochronology, & the CU TRaIL

Dr. Rebecca M. Flowers, Professor

Dept of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder   

Curriculum Vitae        

I am a geochronologist who couples geochronology and thermochronology data with geologic observations to address Earth science problems. My group’s research includes:

  • Developing and refining geochronology techniques, especially (U-Th)/He thermochronology. This has included work on conventional (e.g., apatite, zircon) and novel (e.g., rutile, perovskite conodonts, pyrite) (U-Th)/He thermochronometers, and a new emphasis on innovation with high spatial resolution, laser-ablation (U-Th)/He dating.
  • Deciphering Cenozoic histories of topographic evolution to evaluate links among tectonics, mantle dynamics, erosion, and climate. These studies have focused on the carving of the Grand Canyon, the rise of the southern African Plateau, the uplift history of the Rockies and High Plains, the development of the Marlborough Fault System of New Zealand, and the topographic history of New Guinea.
  • Developing and applying “deep-time” (U-Th)/He thermochronology to decipher thermal histories over 100s of Myr to Gyr intervals.
  • Constraining the timing of ancient unconformity development (e.g., the “Great Unconformities”) and potential links with tectonic, environmental, and biologic change.
  • Determining long-term (10s-100s Ma) burial and erosion histories in continental interiors and their links with kimberlite magmatism, geodynamics, and tectonics.
  • Constraining lunar impact histories using (U-Th)/He thermochronology.

Director, CU TRaIL (Thermochronology Research and Instrumentation Lab)

Our (U-Th)/He lab is the core facility of our research group. I established the lab in 2012 with support from an NSF Instrumentation & Facilities award. We have continued to expand our instrumentation with two additional NSF grants. We recently installed an ESI NWR193UC excimer laser and an KLA ZETA-20 optical profiler, and are building a custom, low-volume, He extraction and measurement line. Together this equipment is adding in situ, laser-ablation U-Pb and (U-Th)/He dating capabilities to the TRaIL.

Our lab generates thousands of (U-Th)/He analyses annually, counting >200 scientists and students among its users and regularly hosting lab visitors. We also have begun offering U-Pb analyses via LA-ICPMS. Please visit our lab website and contact me at rebecca.flowers@colorado.edu or research associate Dr. Jim Metcalf if you’re interested in obtaining data in our lab.

Our Research Team

Our group fosters a collaborative and supportive environment in which we emphasize high-quality data, careful thinking about the science problems, and clear writing. I have been fortunate to have a series of excellent students and postdocs over the years who have pushed me and our group’s science. I have also been lucky to have Dr. Jim Metcalf be the cornerstone of our lab for over a decade, as both a research associate and the TRaIL lab manager.

I am always seeking smart, creative, motivated students who are a good fit for our research team, although funding availability varies annually. If you may be interested in joining my group, please contact me at rebecca.flowers@colorado.edu. If you are a potential postdoc with initiative and project ideas, feel free to reach out to discuss possible funding opportunities.

News (and click here for more Group and Lab News with Pics!)                       

  • October 2025. It was super fun attending the 2025 Geological Society of America meeting in San Antonio, TX and seeing current and former TRaIL members and collaborators doing such excellent science. Also awesome to see Mike Williams (UMass-Amherst) receive the Career Award from the Structural Geology and Tectonics Division. Mike was an important mentor for me early in my career and I was happy to be involved in his award nomination.
  • October 2025. Check out Anthony Fuentes’ (UC Berkeley) new paper in Earth and Planetary Science Letters on iron ore evolution from hematite U-Pb dating. The U/Pb data were acquired in TRaIL. Former postdoc Liam Courtney-Davies and I are both coauthors on this work.
  • September 2025. Congrats to Spencer Zeigler for successfully defending her PhD thesis, “Kimberlites, cratons, and chronometers”!
  • September 2025. Congrats to TRaIL PhD student Connor Diaz for receiving a 2025 Wiley award for his presentation at the 2025 meeting of the Meteoritical Society!
  • August 2025. Welcome to John Allard who is joining TRaIL as a new PhD student! John joins us with a background in mineral exploration and field mapping to study the uplift history of the Sierra Nevada for his PhD thesis research.
  • August 2025. Welcome to Paige McDowell who is starting her MSc degree in TRaIL! Paige completed her undergraduate degree in geology at Albion College and will work on aspects of laser-ablation (U-Th)/He method development for her MSc project.
  • August 2025. I’m attending the TIMES (Time-Integrated Matrix for Earth Sciences) kickoff workshop at Carnegie Science in Washington, DC to give an invited talk in the session focused on Strengthening the TIMES Community. The talk is focused on the experience of developing the AGeS program as mechanism for training early-career researchers, community engagement, and developing human infrastructure.
  • August 2025. Good luck to TRaIL postdoc Liam Courtney-Davies as he starts a new tenure-track faculty job at San Diego State University. Congrats Professor Courtney-Davies!
  • July 2025. Incoming CU TRaIL PhD student John Allard and I are spending a week doing fieldwork in the northern Sierra Nevada in collaboration with Prof Liz Cassel (Univ Idaho), Prof Robinson Cecil (Cal State Northridge), PhD student Nick Borders (Univ Idaho), and undergrad Daniel Hirota (Cal State Northridge). We collected an excellent sample suite for thermochronology and detrital zircon analysis as part of our NSF-funded project and are excited to launch this new research!
  • July 2025. PhD student Connor Diaz is attending the Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Perth, Australia where he presented his (U-Th)/He thermochronologic research on a Martian shergottite meteorite (NWA 12241).
  • July 2025. We wish TRaIL postdoc Cat Ross the best as she heads to Texas to start a tenure-track faculty position at Baylor University. Congrats Professor Ross!
  • June 2025. Congrats to PhD student Spencer Zeigler on her new job as a senior data scientist for the state of Colorado! Spencer will defend her thesis in the fall, and is excited to start this position in the meantime.
  • June 2025. Postdoc Liam Courtney-Davies, Christine Siddoway (Colorado College), and I were filmed and interviewed about our Snowball Earth research for the PBS documentary series “Transparent Earth” by producer and director Sarah Burns and her team.
  • May 2025. The AGeS3 team organized the 2025 virtual AGeS community symposium. The symposium saw >100 participants and consisted of a mix of invited talks and updates on AGeS projects, as well as breakout sessions dedicated to conversations about opportunities and challenges for the U.S. geochronology community. I gave a presentation summarizing the ingredients and impacts of AGeS over the last 12 years.
  • May 2025. Cullen Kortyna has completed the first SNODASE (Students of Northglenn Date Ancient Snowball Earth) project in collaboration with Northglenn High School students! The students presented posters on the new detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology data acquired in TRaIL on a sample of the Snowball Earth Tava sandstone injectite in Boulder Canyon. Cullen, CU TRaIL postdoc Cat Ross, and Dr. Lon Abbott evaluated the posters and provided feedback. Both Northglenn high school and TRaIL are excited to continue this new collaboration in future years.
  • May 2025. CU TRaIL had a fun day at the BolderBoulder 10k! More than 50,000 runners participate in this race and finish in the stadium right next to the Benson Earth Sciences building. Liam, Spencer, Jim, Cat, Dave, my 9th grade son Alex (who runs track at Boulder High School), and me all participated and had a blast. Watch out, TRaIL may be back next year!
  • April 2025. I gave a talk entitled “Two Tales of Colorado: From the Cenozoic Spanish Peaks to Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth Deposits” to the GEOL Advisory Board on recently published CU TRaIL research. These studies were spearheaded by former TRaIL undergrad Sabrina Kainz and current TRaIL postdoc Liam Courtney-Davies. There is still much exciting science to be done in Colorado!
  • April 2025. Welcome to Prof Dave Whipp, professor of geodynamics at the University of Helsinki, who is spending two months in TRaIL during his sabbatical! Dave delivered a great talk in the GEOL colloquium on using thermochronology to understand lithospheric dynamics. We’re excited to learn more about Dave’s modeling tools.
  • March 2025. CU TRaIL research associate Cullen Kortyna, together with Northglenn High School geology teacher Kent Hups, launched the first year of SNODASE (Students of Northglenn Date Ancient Snowball Earth), which is a problem-based learning curriculum focused on Snowball Earth rocks in Colorado. SNODASE was funded as part of an NSF award to myself and Jim Metcalf. Cullen visited Northglenn High School to introduce the project, and took the students on a field trip to collect a sample of the Tava for detrital zircon geochronology. Cullen will collect detrital zircon data on the sample and will interact with the students as they interpret the results.
  • March 2025. We enjoyed having Prof Nick Swanson-Hysell (University of Minnesota) and PhD student Anthony Fuentes (UC-Berkeley) visit TRaIL! Nick gave a fantastic Dept colloquium talk about his research on the Mesoproterozoic Grenville orogeny and Micontinent Rift system. Anthony acquired detrital hematite U-Pb data with Liam as part of his AGeS project in TRaIL.
  • February 2025. It was fun to have Christine Siddoway (Colorado College) and several Colorado College undergraduate students working in the lab with Liam acquiring U-Pb and REE data by LA-ICPMS. Liam and Christine co-taught a class at Colorado College focused on the Neoproterozoic Tava sandstone in Colorado.
  • January 2025: Postdoc Liam Courtney-Davies and me, along with colleague Christine Siddoway (Colorado College), are interviewed by several film makers about the potential to showcase the Snowball Earth Tavakaiv sandstone injectites (the subject of their recent PNAS paper) in an upcoming PBS documentary. We hope to collaborate on this effort this summer!
  • January 2025: Senior research associate Jim Metcalf provided an outstanding lab tour to a group of CU students in the Science Bound STEM program. The students enjoyed the candy bowl on their way out of the lab!
  • January 2025: I was interviewed for a children’s book by Emily Starr entitled “Nature’s Hidden Library” that includes content on the Great Unconformity, the Grand Canyon, and Snowball Earth. What a fantastic book containing beautiful language that makes these fascinating parts of Earth history accessible to kids. I look forward to seeing this book in print in the future!
  • December 2024: The AGeS3 team is enthusiastic to announce the 14 new AGeS-TRaCE (TRaining and Community Engagement) awardees for 2024 in the inaugural cycle of this microaward program. The projects were funded at an average award amount of $8,944. Thanks to the 6-member review committee, who invested substantial time reviewing and providing feedback on all proposals.
  • December 2024: Postdoc Liam Courtney Davies and PhD student Spencer Zeigler are attending AGU in Washington, D.C. to give talks on their science. Congrats to Liam on his invited talk!
  • November 2024: Congrats to CU TRaIL postdoc Dr. Liam Courtney-Davies for his new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences with me, Christine Siddoway (CC), Adrian Tasistro-Hart (UCSB), and Francis Macdonald (UC-Berkeley). Entitled “Hematite U-Pb dating of Snowball Earth meltwater events”, this contribution presents U-Pb dates for the Neoproterozoic Tavakaiv sandstone in Colorado and a model for the Tava’s glacial origin. This work has been featured in multiple popular science articles, including The Conversation (>79,000 reads), ArsTechnica, Science Daily, and CU Boulder Today.
  • November 2024: Congrats to CU TRaIL PhD student Connor Diaz for passing his comprehensive exam with no conditions. Nice work, Connor!
  • October-November 2024: I greatly appreciate the expert geochronologists who visited and gave excellent, engaging guest lectures in my graduate-level Geochronology class! Dr. Leah Morgan (USGS) presented on 40Ar/39Ar geochronology and high-precision dating of the Fish Canyon Tuff in Colorado. Dr. Emily Cooperdock (Brown) gave a multipart talk entitled “Unlocking plate boundary dynamics with thermochronology”, in addition to her colloquium lecture to the Department. Dr. Holly Stein and Dr. Judy Hannah (AIRIE program, formerly of CSU) joined us in November to discuss numerous innovative applications of Re-Os geochronology. Thanks to all of you!
  • September 2024: Former PhD student Barra Peak, TRaIL research associate Cullen Kortyna, and I attended the National Geological Society of America meeting in Anaheim, CA! I was recognized as a new Fellow of GSA and enjoyed dinner afterwards with colleagues and friends. Barra gave a talk on one of her PhD studies focused on U-Pb and (U-Th)/He double-dating of the Proterozoic Jacobsville sandstone of the U.S. midcontinent. Cullen presented his monazite (U-Th)/He dating research from his previous postdoc at the University of Connecticut.
  • August 2024: Former PhD student Barra Peak is starting an Excellence in Earth and Planetary Science Postdoc Fellowship at UT Austin. Best of luck, Barra!
  • August 2024: Postdoctoral scientist Dr. Liam Courtney-Davies is attending the Goldschmidt Conference in Chicago where he is presenting a talk on his work on the Tavakaiv sand injectites in Colorado entitled: “Dating of Snowball Earth Meltwater Events Using In-Situ Hematite U-Pb geochronology”.
  • July 2024: Welcome to WSU student PhD student Aurora Rosenberger, who visited the lab to prepare samples for her AGeS project focused on Snake Range detachment faulting!
  • July 2024: PhD student Connor Diaz is attending the Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society in Brussels, Belgium where he is presenting his (U-Th)/He results for phosphates from Apollo 14 melt breccia 14311.
  • July 2024: Congrats to Spencer on receiving the top student poster award at the 12th International Kimberlite Conference! Excellent job, Spencer.
  • July 2024: PhD student Spencer Zeigler and I are traveling to Yellowknife in the NWT, Canada for the 12th International Kimberlite Conference! Both of us joined the Northwest Territories Diamond Mine Field Trip, during which we visited the Diavik, Gahcho Kue, and Ekati Diamond Mines. Spencer is presenting two posters on their research related to 1) dating kimberlite emplacement with megacrystic zircon (U-Th)/He geochronology and 2) deciphering the burial and erosion history of the Slave craton and surrounding regions using apatite (U-Th)/He dating of kimberlites.
  • July 2024: I’ve been been awarded a new grant from the NSF Tectonics program to use thermochronology to better understand the history and causes of erosion and uplift of the northern Sierra Nevada. This project is in collaboration with Liz Cassel (University of Idaho) and Robinson Cecil (Cal State University Northridge). Becky is seeking a new PhD student for this project to start in Fall 2025!
  • June 2024: Check out our new paper in Geochronology, lead by current PhD student Spencer Zeigler and former MSc student Morgan Baker, and coauthored by Jim and me! This contribution is focused on quantifying uncertainties on, and characterizing the accuracy of, eU concentrations and alpha-ejection corrections in zircon (U-Th)/He chronology, building on our previous paper for apatite. We are working on incorporating these uncertainties and corrections into our regular workflow for generating and reporting (U-Th)/He data.
  • June 2024: I’m a coauthor on a paper in Earth and Planetary Science Letters lead by former UCSB student Francisco Apen (now at Princeton) and coauthored by Roberta Rudnick (UCSB), John Cottle (UCSB), and Sean Gaynor (Princeton). This contribution was focused on deciphering the history of metasomatism preserved in lower crustal xenoliths from the Wyoming craton, and leveraged zircon (U-Th)/He geochronology to show that the timing of kimberlite eruption distinctly postdates Laramide-aged metasomatism in the deep crust. As someone who did her PhD on lower crustal rocks, I especially enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate on this work!
  • June 2024: PhD student Connor Diaz attended a Small Sample Handling Workshop held by the Lunar and Planetary Institute at ASU to learn how to handle high-value extraterrestrial materials. He has returned very fired up about his research on lunar samples!
  • May 2024: Welcome to new TRaIL research associate Cullen Kortyna! Cullen will be working with us to further develop laser-ablation (U-Th)/He methods in TRaIL. Cullen just completed a postdoc at the University of Connecticut, following his PhD at UT-Austin.
  • April 2024: Thanks to TRaIL group members who organized a geochronology booth at the Department of Geological Sciences’ inaugural public outreach event, Earth Mysteries & Histories on Saturday, April 27th! This event was extremely well attended by the public.
  • Mar 2024: PhD student Barra Peak travelled to Germany to give two talks at the University of Potsdam and GFZ about her research focused on deciphering Proterozoic thermal histories associated with Great Unconformity development.
  • April 2024: Congrats to 2024 AGeS awardees Aurora Rosenberger (WSU) and Anthony Fuentes (UC-Berkeley), who will be collaborating with TRaIL on their research projects. Aurora will use low temperature thermochronology to investigate temporal connections between normal faulting, ductile stretching, and detachment faulting in the Snake Range core complex, Nevada. Anthony will explore development of detrital hematite U/Pb geochronology.
  • April 2024: The AGeS3 team is enthusiastic to announce the 22 new AGeS-Grad awardees for 2024. The projects were funded at an average award amount of $8690. Thanks to the 10-member review committee, who invested substantial time reviewing and providing feedback on every submitted proposal, and for their thoughtful discussions during the review committee meetings.
  • April 2024: Congrats to Barra Peak, who defended her PhD thesis on April 5th with flying colors! Terrific work, Dr. Peak. Barra will begin a postdoctoral fellowship at UT-Austin later this year.
  • April 2024: It was excellent to have Dr. Graham Pearson (University of Alberta) visit for two days to give a Department colloquium talk on super-deep diamonds, teach us about tuite (a high-pressure phosphate phase that can occur diamonds) during TRaIL group meeting, and discuss research. Graham is a key collaborator on our NSF-funded project on Arctic kimberlites. If there is one thing that we’ve learned during this project, it’s that kimberlites are complicated beasts! Can’t help but love them.
  • April 2024: Another noble gas mass spec has moved in next door to TRaIL! The previously owned Nu Instruments Noblesse magnetic sector machine from the 40Ar/39Ar lab at the University of Vermont has been passed on to Professor Carolyn Crow in our Department. Dr. Jeff Benowitz, who was employed in TRaIL in 2022 and continues to contribute his knowledge to our group, drove the extraction line across the country and is working to set up the equipment. Jeff has extensive expertise in 40Ar/39Ar dating and Alaska tectonics. We look forward to collaborating with our new neighbor lab on projects in the future!
  • March 2024: Welcome to new TRaIL postdoc Dr. Cat Ross (PhD, UT-Austin)! Cat is funded by an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship to work on the thermochronology of deformed accessory minerals. Cat will be working in TRaIL until she begins a tenure-track faculty position at Baylor University in fall 2025.
  • March 2024: TRaIL PhD student Connor Antonio Diaz attended the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, where he gave a talk on his phosphate (U-Th)/He thermochronology data for Apollo 14 Melt Breccia 14311. Our colleague Dr. Carolyn Crow also attended and presented work in which Connor, Jim, and I are involved as part of a funded NASA project on Apollo 14 and 15 samples.
  • February 2024: Congrats to PhD student Spencer Zeigler for finishing 2nd in the CU Boulder Three Minute Thesis Competition, in which graduate students across CU-Boulder explain their thesis research in three minutes to a general audience. Way to go, Spencer!
  • January 2024: Congrats to former TRaIL PhD student Colin Sturrock on a new paper published in Minerals with me, Barry Kohn (University of Melbourne), and Jim as coauthors. This work presents apatite (U-Th)/He data across the southern Canadian shield to decipher the regional Phanerozoic burial and erosion history, contributing to our ongoing work using (U-Th)/He thermochronology to map out continental scale burial and erosion histories to beetter constrain causative mechanisms. 
  • December 2023: Summer RESESS intern Kaden Berkhahn presented their research on the characterization of kimberlitic megacrystic zircon at the Fall AGU meeting in San Francisco.
  • December 2023: Cullen Kortynk will start as a research associate in the CU TRaIL in May 2024 to aid in streamlining our laser-ablation (U-Th)/He methods. Cullen obtained his PhD at UT-Austin, and is currently a postdoc at the University of Connecticut.
  • November 2023: I travelled to Tanzania for field work with Princeton colleagues Blair Schoene and Francisco Apen to explore granites, kimberlites, and quartzites of the Tanzanian craton!
  • October 2023: See our new paper in PNAS on the rise of New Guinea and the fall of Neogene global temperatures! This contribution was lead by former postdoc Peter Martin with coauthors Francis Macdonald (UCSB), Nadine McQuarrie (UPitt), Pierre Maffre (UC-Berkeley), and me. This study used new (U-Th)/He thermochronology in New Guinea, a palinspastic reconstruction of the Central Range, and a coupled weathering-climate model to estimate 0.6 to 1.2°C of global cooling associated with New Guinea uplift and weathering.
  • September 2023: PhD student Connor Antonio Diaz participated in the Lunar Planetary Institute’s field training and research program at astronaut training sites in Flagstaff, Arizona used by NASA for lunar mission simulations. For his PhD, Connor is funded by a NASA grant to acquire phosphate (U-Th)/He data for lunar impact melt breccias to better decipher the lunar impact history.
  • August 2023: Check out our new paper in Earth and Planetary Science Letters lead by PhD student Barra Peak with myself and Francis Macdonald (UCSB) as coauthors! This work constrains substantial Ediacaran to Ordovician (post-Snowball) erosion below the Great Unconformity across the southern Canadian Shield, indicating tectonic and geodynamic drivers for this exhumation event.
  • August 2023: The CU TRaIL is advertising for a Research Associate/Lab Technician in Geo- and Thermochronology! Funds are available to fully support the position for 5 years. Start date is flexible. Feel free to reach out to me with questions about the position. Applications will be reviewed beginning September 12, 2023 and the position will remain open until filled.
  • August 2023: Spencer Zeigler, Liam Courtney-Davies, Barra Peak, and I are headed to the Gordon Research Conference on Geochronology in Mt. Snow, Vermont. Spencer, Liam, and Barra presented their research, while I facilitated the GRC “Power Hour”.
  • August 2023: I’m traveling to MIT for the COOL (Context of Long-term Climate and Tectonics) workshop associated with a FRES grant on which I’m a co-PI with Francis Macdonald (UCSB), Oli Jagoutz (MIT), Nick Swanson-Hysell (UC-Berkeley), Lorraine Liesiecki (UCSB), and John Chiang (UC-Berkeley).
  • June 2023: Welcome to summer RESESS intern Kaden Berkhahn from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, who is working with Spencer Zeigler, Liam Courtney-Davies, and Becky on characterizing megacrystic zircon crystals from kimberlites!
  • May 2023: Jim Metcalf and I are awarded a new NSF Instrumentation & Facilities grant (EAR-2311978) for 5 years of laboratory technician support! We’re excited to help advance and broaden access to laser-ablation (U-Th)/He chronology through this award.
  • May 2023: Check out our new paper lead by PhD student Spencer Zeigler with coauthors Jim and me in the journal Geochronology on assigning uncertainty and improving the accuracy of alpha-ejection corrections and eU concentrations in (U-Th)/He chronology. Congrats Spencer!
  • April 2023: Congrats to Sabrina Kainz for being awarded a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! Sabrina has been an invaluable research assistant for TRaIL since last fall, after completing her honors thesis in spring 2022 in TRaIL in collaboration with Dr. Lon Abbott. Sabrina will begin a PhD at the University of Washington this fall.
  • April 2023: Congrats to Dr. Cat Ross (PhD, UT-Austin) for receiving an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship to work in TRaIL! Cat will collaborate with me on the thermochronology of deformed accessory minerals. She will join TRaIL in April 2024.
  • April 2023: I and Ramon Arrowsmith (ASU), together with the rest of the AGeS3 team, are excited to announce the 22 new AGeS-Grad awardees for 2023. The projects were funded at an average award amount of $8585. Thanks to the 10-member review committee, who invested substantial time reviewing and providing feedback on every submitted proposal, and unanimously agreed upon the final award list.
  • April 2023: I was interviewed for a geochronology article on “How do we know how old Earth is?” published in livescience.com. You can check it out here.
  • March 2023: I have a new paper in Geology lead by former TRaIL PhD student (now assistant prof at Univ of Idaho) Jess Stanley! It was fun writing this contribution about obtaining the first glimpse of Cenozoic erosion on the southern African Plateau from thermochronology and the implications for associated topographic uplift.
  • March 2023: Our research on the Great Unconformites was featured in a GSA Science Communication blog: “Is ‘The Great Unconformity’ a Misnomer?”  You can read it here.
  • Feb 2023: Check out our new paper in the journal Geochronology led by TRaIL postdoc Peter Martin along with Jim and me on the calculation of uncertainty in the (U-Th)/He system. We’ll be using the HeCalc program to compute the uncertainty of our (U-Th)/He data in TRaIL moving forward.
  • Feb 2023. I’m a coauthor on a new paper with AGeS awardee Ellen Lamont (PhD, Oregon State Univ) is now published in Terra Nova! Funded by an AGeS-Grad award, Ellen acquired (U-Th)/He data in TRaIL to constrain the timing of NW Himalayan foreland accretion, concluding it predates late Cenozoic climate change.
  • Feb 2023. Welcome to new TRaIL postdoc Dr. Liam Courtney-Davies! Liam brings laser-ablation ICP-MS, U-Pb dating, and trace element chemistry expertise to TRaIL. He comes to us from a postdoc at Curtin University and a PhD at the University of Adelaide, both in Australia.
  • Jan 2023. I’m a coauthor on a new paper on “Neoproterozoic of Laurentia” with colleagues Francis Macdonald (UCSB), Adolph Yonkee (Weber State), and Nick Swanson-Hysell (UC-Berkeley) in the Geological Society of America Memoir on “Laurentia: Turning Points in the Evolution of a Continent”. It was fun to delve into this time interval and contribute a piece on the Neoproterozoic thermochronologic record.