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This course focuses on modern sedimentary environments, oceanography and marine organisms as a key to interpreting geological history, and the techniques and approaches that allow geologist to deal with geological time. The fundamental underpinning is stratigraphy, and using sedimentary features and fossils as palaeoenvironment indicators, with particular attention paid to New Zealand’s geological development.
Students successfully completing this course will:have developed an understanding of sedimentary processes occurring at the surface of the Earth. be able to classify and identify common sedimentary rocks in both hand specimen and under the microscope. be able to use sedimentary and biofacies analysis to interpret ancient environments and to reconstruct palaeogeography.be able to construct and correlate stratigraphic columns from a variety of data.be able to recognise and utilise important fossil groups used in NZ stratigraphy and environmental interpretation. understand the development of the New Zealand biota.Goal of the course is that students are fully able to describe sedimentary rocks, derive original depositional environments from sedimentary and palaeontological data, and interpret stratigraphic successions from a palaeontological and sedimentary perspective.
GEOL111 and GEOL112. With a B+ average, ora standard acceptable to the Head of Department, GEOL113 may be substituted for either GEOL111 or GEOL112.
GEOL234, GEOL235
Kari Bassett
Catherine Reid and Stefan Winkler
Boggs, Sam; Principles of sedimentology and stratigraphy ; 4th ed; Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006.
Prothero, Donald R; Bringing fossils to life : an introduction to paleobiology ; 2nd ed; McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2004.
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The topics coved by this course are:• sediment transport processes and sources of sediment• terrestrial and marine depositional environments• burial, diagenesis and lithification processes acting on sedimentary rocks• basic principles of oceanography • use of microfossils in stratigraphy, and modern and ancient environment analysis• trace fossils in marine environments• sequence-, litho- and biostratigraphy.
This course focusses on modern sedimentary environments at the surface of the Earth as a key to interpreting the past in geological history, and the techniques and approaches that allow geologist to deal with geological time. The course opens with lectures and laboratory classes that introduce the principles of fluid flow, sediment transport, and sedimentary depositional environments and how these processes affect the texture and composition of sedimentary rocks. The course then moves on to oceanography and marine fossils relevant to New Zealand geology, and how, along with sedimentary features, they are used to interpret past environments. We will then look at time and the depositional and geological history of the last 80 million years of the New Zealand regional response to sea-level change and ice sheet growth in Antarctica. The fundamental underpinning is stratigraphy, that is the study of the layers of rocks in the earth’s crust, and using fossils as dating tools and sedimentary features and fossils as palaeoenvironment indicators.
Domestic fee $718.00
International fee $3,350.00
* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.
This course will not be offered if fewer than 30 people apply to enrol.
For further information see Geological Sciences .