Adam Maloof - Research
Research Statement
My interests center on the relationship between ancient life, climate and geography. The Neoproterozoic Era (900-540 million years ago (Ma)) is a particularly important interval in Earth history because, at the same time that Earth endured radical drift of the continents and a glaciation that sealed the global ocean in ice for millions of years, animals first evolved and quickly became large and diverse. I choose precipitated sedimentary rocks such as limestone as my history books because a single outcrop of limestone may contain physical evidence for the energetics of winds, waves and currents, biological imprints of ecology and evolution, chemical records of the climate system, and magnetic evidence of latitude and geography. My group conducts extended field campaigns to map these physical and chemical records into a three-dimensional landscape of ancient environments. My goal is to tell rich stories of Earth history that shed light on the origin of animals and the evolution of Earth's climate.
Current Projects
| The importance of non-dipole contributions to paleomagnetic fields | |
| AUSTRALIA & ARCTIC |
True polar wander (TPW) in the geologic record |
| The geological record of Cryogenian glaciation | |
| The Wonoka Formation - submarine canyons and the largest d13C anomaly in Earth history | |
| Carbon cycling during the Cambrian explosion | |
| The origin of magnetization and cyclic parasequences in modern carbonates | |
| Lonar Crater: a terrestrial analogue for Martian impact processes |
Opportunities
Undergraduate and graduate students interested in conducting research in Earth history at Princeton should email me for more information.