News

Did volcanoes kill the dinosaurs? New evidence points to ‘maybe’
March 4, 2019
Author
Written by Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications
Fact: About 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, 75 percent of plant and animal species went extinct, including the dinosaurs (except those that evolved into birds). Fact: About 66 million years ago, an enormous asteroid or comet hit the Earth near what is now Chicxulub, Mexico, throwing rock, dust and water vapor into the atmosphere. Fact: About 66 million years ago, a massive volcano erupted lavas in India that are now called the Deccan Traps, burying much of the subcontinent under more than 11,000 feet of basalt (lava rock) and pouring poisonous gases into the atmosphere.
A stochastic sampling approach to zircon eruption age interpretation
Oct. 2, 2018
Author
Written by C.B. Keller, B. Schoene and K.M. Samperton
Our new paper, published in Geochemical Perspective Letters, demonstrates a new, less sobujective, method of calculating volcanic eruption ages from high-precision U-Pb zircon geochronologic data. Brenhin Keller has made the software, written in both julia and C, freely available. He also includes on his site, as part of Chron.jl, software for carrying out Bayesian modeling useful for generating age models in stratigraphic sections given geochronologic data and uncertainties. This model is similar to previous approaches for age modeling, but here can be run in tandem with the zircon age distribution modeling highlighted in the paper.
From crystals to climate: New ‘gold standard’ timeline connects volcanic eruptions to climate change
Sept. 19, 2018
Author
Written by Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications
Grad student Jenn Kasbohm just published her work dating the Columbia River Basalts in Science Advances. The Princeton Press Release was also picked up by various news sites, such as Science Daily and Phys.org.
Geochronology and Thermochronology
Feb. 1, 2018
Author
Written by Blair Schoene, Associate Professor of Geosciences

Check out the new textbook, to which I contributed a chapter on U-Th-Pb geochronology, entitled Geochronology and Thermochronology, by Peter Reiners et al., published by AGU and Wiley. Here is the link on…

Princeton geochronologists, paleontologist investigate interplay of Volcanism, Impacts and Mass Extinctions with field work in India’s Deccan Traps
Jan. 14, 2014
Author
Written by Kyle Samperton *17

In December 2013, a research team from the Department of Geosciences traveled to central India in order to address one of the most captivating questions in Earth history: what was the cause of the dinosaur-eradicating Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) mass extinction ca. 65 million years ago? The group included Profs. Blair Schoene and Gerta Keller;…

Citation for Blair Schoene, recipient of the F.W. Clarke Award 2013 of the Geochemical Society
Feb. 8, 2013
Author
Written by Urs Schaltegger, Geochemical Society

Dr. Blair Schoene, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences of Princeton University named 2013 Clarke Medalist (https://www.geochemsoc.org/honors/awards/fw-clarke). The Clarke award honours a young scientist for a single scientific contribution or -alternatively - for…

Princeton Geosciences Department opens world class geochronology laboratory
Jan. 18, 2012
Author
Written by Laura Poppick, Timslab Manager
A world class radiometric geochronology laboratory has now opened in Guyot Hall, with facilities equipped to date Earth’s oldest rocks. Assistant Professor Blair Schoene proposed the new laboratory when he joined the faculty in June 2009, and has since overseen its design and preparation.

Laboratory Blog

December 2015

Bring in the new year with our EOS piece that summarizes the findings of an NSF sponsored inquiry into the state of geochronology in the US, published in full last February.  

July 2015

I've recently joined the editorial staff at Science Advances, a new journal put out by AAAS, the publishers of Science.  Submit your best work here!

July 2015

Tired of that old Taxi Driver poster on your wall left over from your freshman dorm room?  Why not upgrade to this poster, which outlines the traceability of U-Pb geochronology to SI units.  It is related to our recent papers published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta (Condon et al., and McLean et al.,…

February 2015

I've been part of an NSF funded team charged with the task of putting together a report characterizing the status of geochronology in the US with a vision to the future.  It's done, download it here

December 2014

Check out the news stories related to our new paper on geochronology of the Deccan traps and the relationship to the dino-die-off:

Radio interviews on Canadian Broadcasting's 

November 2014

Check out the youtube channel featuring all the keynote talks for the recent Pardee symposium at GSA in Vancouver in October, featuring a talk by yours truly on the geochronology of mass extinction events.  Click here

September 2014

Congrats to group member Jon Husson for defending his PhD!!

May 2012

See the press associated with the recent paper by Brenhin Keller and myself released today in Nature: 

Princeton University press release: click here