Lecture: Microbially mediated carbonates in the Mesoproterozoic Stoer Group of NW Scotland; earliest evidence of life in Britain?
Speaker:
Date and Time
19:30 -
Location
Virtual Talk via Zoom
Lecture Description
Microbially mediated carbonates in the Mesoproterozoic Stoer Group of NW Scotland; earliest evidence of life in Britain? Dr Peter Gutteridge
Carbonates within the Stoer Group, previously interpreted as abiogenic structures, are reinterpreted as microbial stromatolites. Stromatolites form by a combination of sediment trapping, binding and precipitation of carbonates associated with microbial activity. They take the form of mats and domical structures a few tens of cm in size that grew in water a few cm deep around the margins of lakes. Some larger stromatolitic structures, several tens of metres across, formed in the deeper parts of lake margins and over the front of coarse-grained deltas as they built out into lakes. These stromatolites are also associated with sedimentary structures that bound the sediment during deposition, but without precipitation of carbonate. These may indicate the presence of a range of calcifying and non-calcifying microbial communities during deposition of the Stoer Group.
I first discovered the carbonates within the Stoer Group when I mapped the Stoer Peninsula as an undergraduate at Leeds University. Afterwards, I did a Ph.D. at Manchester University on Dinantian carbonates in Derbyshire and since then spent my professional career looking at carbonate systems of all ages from all over the world. I now am a visiting lecturer at Manchester University, researching Dinantian carbonates, carbonate breccia systems, evaporites and Precambrian carbonates.
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