Together with such excellent colleagues from the Precambrian geology field as Graham Shields, Daniel LeHeron and Sebastian Viehmann I am convening a session of biogeochemistry and evolution from the Archean to the Neoproterozoic. The preliminary session abstract is:
Palaeoenvironments of the Precambrian World:
from the Archean via Snowball Earth and beyond
Fundamental key parameters to understand the evolution of life and Earth's habitats involve the interaction between the atmos-, hydros- and biospheres. For instance, the redox- evolution and the geodynamical evolution during Precambrian times played a fundamental role in shaping ancient environments. In this session we invite contributions from combined fields of sedimentology, (bio)geochemistry, numeric modelling, palaeontology and geophysics, ranging in the timeframe from the origin of life until Snowball Earth and beyond. We discuss the (co-)evolution of the atmosphere, biosphere and oceans and also try to understand how much better the Neoproterozoic glaciations are constrained since the last 20 years and what the sedimentary record offers to understand the behaviour of the ancient ice masses, and how it compares to Phanerozoic sedimentary successions.
hope to see you all at EGU this spring