Collaborative Research: Testing Models for Early Paleozoic Deposition, Volcanism, and Biotas of Sibumasu: Implications for Tectonics and Paleogeography

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The time period between 505 to 485 million years ago was a dynamic time in Earth's history and included extensive volcanic activity and the evolution of ancient organisms that then occupied the world's shallow oceans. Unfortunately, there are few places in the world that have the volcanic ash beds that are needed to really understand the timing of events during this period. However, there is one region where the record of ancient volcanoes and their ashes has survived: an ancient fragment of Asia called "Sibumasu", which comprises parts of Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, and southwestern China. In Sibumasu, ashes and sedimentary rocks with fossils are layered in many thick sections, offering the opportunity to obtain high precision dates from the ashes, and insight into the feedbacks between the physical and biological worlds during this transformative time in Earth history. In addition, this project will incorporate the training of graduate and undergraduate students across three U.S. institutions and will partner with a complementary UNESCO funded IGCP668 project on Sibumasu that supports the participation of scientists from developing countries to attend meetings and workshops in Thailand, Myanmar, China, Japan, and the USA. This project will determine the age of the rocks found in the Sibumasu region in order to understand the pattern of Earth-Life interactions. To do this, the team will incorporate a multidisciplinary approach to the project including extensive field sampling, paleogeographic analyses of fossils, geochemical rock characterization, and a variety of geochronologic techniques. Further, the team will work in partnership with the Myanmar Geosciences Society to produce an illustrated children's book in Burmese featuring the fossils of Mt. Hsingmango, and what they say about regional Earth history. The story also will be modified for use with the National Institute of Design's chitrakatha workshop for India's nationally ranked graphic art students and will form the basis of an animated story of India's migration across the Tethys Ocean and collision with Asia that will have broad educational reach across the subcontinent.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.