Martin Brasier
Just how good are patterns in the fossil record for studying the origins of major biological groups?And just how good is our own mental equipment for interpreting those patterns when we discover them?
My first tentative answers to these questions emerged after a year spent as Ship's Scientist aboard HMS Fawn during its cruise across the reefs and lagoons of the Caribbean in 1970. From this I could see that it is the analysis of interconnections between and within systems that may provide a valuable key for decoding the early history of life. Ever since then, I have sought to increase and expand our understanding of big transitions in the fossil record, pushing the researches of my group ever deeper in geological time. All of those questions that interest me tend to relate some very major interconnections in deep time, notably: patterns and processes in the Cambrian explosion; origins of the animal phyla; the dynamics of reefal and foraminiferal symbioses through deep time; phosphorus and the carbon cycle in deep time; origins of terrestrial ecosystems; the earliest fossil record; and the origins of life itself.
Current areas of field activity include the Archaean of Australia and the Proterozoic and Cambrian of Canada, Australia, Asia and Oman as well as Britain. We often undertake active comparisons between recent and ancient ecosystems, and we like to pioneer innovative high resolution techniques, ranging from satellite imaging and field mapping to microscopic mapping using Confocal Microscopy, Laser Raman, NanoSims and other biogeochemical mapping techniques. All of these approaches are driven, however, by our search for innovative and provocative questions. Science is not a belief system - it is a unique system for the measurement of doubt.
Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Oxford, I am also a Trustee and a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. Other duties have included serving as Chairman of the Faculty of Earth Sciences; Chairman of the Subcommission on Cambrian Stratigraphy; membership of NSF panels; membership of NASA panels on life on Mars. I also hold a Professorship at Memorial University, Newfoundland. My first popular science book “Darwin's Lost World” was published by Oxford University Press in 2009 as a celebration of Darwin's 200th birthday. I am currently writing a sequel to celebrate Robert Hooke and the hidden history of the cell.
Important resources available to visitors and to researchers include: thousands of specimens relating to the origins of the major animal groups, accumulated during the last fifty years; thousands of polished thin sections relating to the earliest microscopic life; high quality Nikon Multiphot and Zeiss imaging facilities; an extensive library; and an attractive field base for studies of Precambrian to modern ecosystems around the coast of Pembrokeshire.
Phone: 01865 272074
Address: Department of Earth Sciences
South Parks Road
Oxford
OX1 3AN
My first tentative answers to these questions emerged after a year spent as Ship's Scientist aboard HMS Fawn during its cruise across the reefs and lagoons of the Caribbean in 1970. From this I could see that it is the analysis of interconnections between and within systems that may provide a valuable key for decoding the early history of life. Ever since then, I have sought to increase and expand our understanding of big transitions in the fossil record, pushing the researches of my group ever deeper in geological time. All of those questions that interest me tend to relate some very major interconnections in deep time, notably: patterns and processes in the Cambrian explosion; origins of the animal phyla; the dynamics of reefal and foraminiferal symbioses through deep time; phosphorus and the carbon cycle in deep time; origins of terrestrial ecosystems; the earliest fossil record; and the origins of life itself.
Current areas of field activity include the Archaean of Australia and the Proterozoic and Cambrian of Canada, Australia, Asia and Oman as well as Britain. We often undertake active comparisons between recent and ancient ecosystems, and we like to pioneer innovative high resolution techniques, ranging from satellite imaging and field mapping to microscopic mapping using Confocal Microscopy, Laser Raman, NanoSims and other biogeochemical mapping techniques. All of these approaches are driven, however, by our search for innovative and provocative questions. Science is not a belief system - it is a unique system for the measurement of doubt.
Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Oxford, I am also a Trustee and a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. Other duties have included serving as Chairman of the Faculty of Earth Sciences; Chairman of the Subcommission on Cambrian Stratigraphy; membership of NSF panels; membership of NASA panels on life on Mars. I also hold a Professorship at Memorial University, Newfoundland. My first popular science book “Darwin's Lost World” was published by Oxford University Press in 2009 as a celebration of Darwin's 200th birthday. I am currently writing a sequel to celebrate Robert Hooke and the hidden history of the cell.
Important resources available to visitors and to researchers include: thousands of specimens relating to the origins of the major animal groups, accumulated during the last fifty years; thousands of polished thin sections relating to the earliest microscopic life; high quality Nikon Multiphot and Zeiss imaging facilities; an extensive library; and an attractive field base for studies of Precambrian to modern ecosystems around the coast of Pembrokeshire.
Phone: 01865 272074
Address: Department of Earth Sciences
South Parks Road
Oxford
OX1 3AN
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Books by Martin Brasier
The challenging search to find a pre-Cambrian fossil record has been one the great quests of 20th-century geology. Now one of its leading figures, Martin Brasier, tells the story of the adventures, the hard science, and the discoveries: among them, he describes an extraordinary world of enigmatic soft-bodied creatures which lived and died before the dawn of the Cambrian.
His expeditions take us to the remote wilds of Mongolia and Siberia during the Cold War, to the depths of the Caribbean sea, and to the run up to the phenomenal explosion of animal life 540 million years ago.
This book from Oxford University Press commemorates 150 years since the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, and 200 years since Darwin's birth in 1809.
Some recent reviews say:
"If there is one book in this crop that Darwin himself would surely have appreciated, it is 'Darwin's Lost World'." Clive Cookson, Financial Times
"A Nabakovian example of great literature...Brasier's solution to Darwin's Dilemmma is a joy to read." Lynn Margulis.
"The story is part travelogue, part memoir, told in an individual style with singular anecdotes. This is a scientific adventure that will entertain and inform general readers and has the potential to inspire the next generation of young researchers." Derek Briggs,The Quarterly Review of Biology
"...the most lively book about matters Cambrian and earlier. Martin Brasier has an engaging personality which comes across well in print." Richard A. Fortey, Times Literary Supplement
Papers by Martin Brasier
the definition of life itself. Hitherto, the problem has largely been addressed in terms of theoretical and experimental
chemistry plus evidence from extremophile habitats like modern hydrothermal vents and meteorite
impact structures. Here, we argue that extensive rafts of glassy, porous, and gas-rich pumice could have had a
significant role in the origin of life and provided an important habitat for the earliest communities of microorganisms.
This is because pumice has four remarkable properties. First, during eruption it develops the highest
surface-area-to-volume ratio known for any rock type. Second, it is the only known rock type that floats as rafts
at the air-water interface and then becomes beached in the tidal zone for long periods of time. Third, it is exposed
to an unusually wide variety of conditions, including dehydration. Finally, from rafting to burial, it has a
remarkable ability to adsorb metals, organics, and phosphates as well as to host organic catalysts such as zeolites
and titanium oxides. These remarkable properties now deserve to be rigorously explored in the laboratory and
the early rock record.
The challenging search to find a pre-Cambrian fossil record has been one the great quests of 20th-century geology. Now one of its leading figures, Martin Brasier, tells the story of the adventures, the hard science, and the discoveries: among them, he describes an extraordinary world of enigmatic soft-bodied creatures which lived and died before the dawn of the Cambrian.
His expeditions take us to the remote wilds of Mongolia and Siberia during the Cold War, to the depths of the Caribbean sea, and to the run up to the phenomenal explosion of animal life 540 million years ago.
This book from Oxford University Press commemorates 150 years since the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, and 200 years since Darwin's birth in 1809.
Some recent reviews say:
"If there is one book in this crop that Darwin himself would surely have appreciated, it is 'Darwin's Lost World'." Clive Cookson, Financial Times
"A Nabakovian example of great literature...Brasier's solution to Darwin's Dilemmma is a joy to read." Lynn Margulis.
"The story is part travelogue, part memoir, told in an individual style with singular anecdotes. This is a scientific adventure that will entertain and inform general readers and has the potential to inspire the next generation of young researchers." Derek Briggs,The Quarterly Review of Biology
"...the most lively book about matters Cambrian and earlier. Martin Brasier has an engaging personality which comes across well in print." Richard A. Fortey, Times Literary Supplement
the definition of life itself. Hitherto, the problem has largely been addressed in terms of theoretical and experimental
chemistry plus evidence from extremophile habitats like modern hydrothermal vents and meteorite
impact structures. Here, we argue that extensive rafts of glassy, porous, and gas-rich pumice could have had a
significant role in the origin of life and provided an important habitat for the earliest communities of microorganisms.
This is because pumice has four remarkable properties. First, during eruption it develops the highest
surface-area-to-volume ratio known for any rock type. Second, it is the only known rock type that floats as rafts
at the air-water interface and then becomes beached in the tidal zone for long periods of time. Third, it is exposed
to an unusually wide variety of conditions, including dehydration. Finally, from rafting to burial, it has a
remarkable ability to adsorb metals, organics, and phosphates as well as to host organic catalysts such as zeolites
and titanium oxides. These remarkable properties now deserve to be rigorously explored in the laboratory and
the early rock record.