• Home
  • About us
  • Research Projects
    • Project I: Reinventing the Planet >
      • Project I Meetings
    • Project II: The Evolution of Modern Marine Ecosystems >
      • Project II: Excursion in Svalbard
      • Project II: Newsletters
    • Project III: PALEOPOLAR >
      • News from PALEOPOLAR
    • Project IV: Descent into the Icehouse
  • People
    • Programme Researchers
    • Research partners
    • Early Career Researchers and Graduate Students
  • Events
    • Annual Meetings >
      • 2014 Co-evolution of Life and Planet
      • 2011 Life and Planet Meeting
    • Summer/Spring School >
      • 2014 Summer School >
        • Invited lecturers and presentations
      • 2013 Spring School >
        • Invited lecturers and presentations >
          • Talks and Download
        • Introdution and Registration
      • 2012 Spring School >
        • Introdution and Registration
        • Invited lecturers and presentations
    • Travelling Speakers
    • Fieldtrips
    • Relevant Events
  • Publications
  • Links
  • Contact us
  • News Feed and Forums!
    • News Feed!
    • Precambrian Network
2014 Sino-UK Coevolution of Life and the Planet Summer School
Palaeoenvironmental Research

The 2014 Sino-UK Coevolution of Life and the Planet Summer School, which was held in Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology from 5th July to 11th July, has ended successfully. More than 40 participants took part from Maryland University (USA), University College London (UK) and 12 Chinese institutions. The summer school had the ‘Coevolution of life and the Planet: Palaeoenvironmental Research’ as its main theme. Coevolution, a recent topic of interest in the Geosciences, requires interdisciplinary research in the general domain of the Earth system sciences. 

    The purpose of 2014 Sino-UK Coevolution of Life and the Planet Summer School is to provide graduate students and early career postdoctoral researchers from relevant fields with an overview of state-of-the-art and hands-on paleoenvironmental research under the general focus of Coevolution; it also provides the participants a great opportunity to communicate with the invited scientists. 7 leading scientists were invited to teach during the school: Prof. Martin Brasier from Oxford University; Prof. Simon Poulton from Leeds University; Prof. Hongfei Ling from Nanjing University; Prof. Xiangkun Zhu from Chinese Academy of Geosciences; Prof. Changqun Cao, Prof. Graham Shields and Prof. Maoyan Zhu from NIGPAS. They are all senior researchers working actively in various earth science disciplines from the UK and China.

      The school was composed of 2 days of field course and 5 days of lectures and seminars. The first day of field course was led by Prof. Maoyan Zhu and Professor Shields with focus on Ordovician Strata plus sampling protocols; the second day of field course was led by Prof. Changqun Cao on the P-T GSSP site in Changxing County, Zhejiang province. For the seminar part, the main subjects this school covered included: 1. Stratigraphy and Sedimentology for Paleoenvironmental Research; 2. Chemostratigraphy; 3. Carbon Isotope interpretations and lab tour; 4. Sulphur isotopes and Carbonate associated Sulphate; 5. Non-traditional stable isotopes; 6. Redox Geochemistry and Redox controls on Nutrient Cycling; 7. Principles of Mo Isotope composition as A Proxy of Global Oceanic Oxygenation State; 8. Introduction to biomarkers (Lab tour); and 9. Early steps in biological evolution: earliest signs of life, earliest eukaryotes and life on land and earliest animals.

      The school was funded by Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology funded 973 Project ‘From Snowball Earth to the Cambrian Explosion: Coevolution of Life and Environment around 600 myr ago’, NERC funded Research Programme: ‘Long Term Coevolution of Life and the Plane’, Chinese Natural Science Foundation (NSFC), State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, NIGPAS and NIGPAS Laboratory Centre (
南古所技术服务中心).




To download the talks please go to the page on www.lifeandplanet.net.cn: Events/Summer/Spring School/Talks and download. Because of the sensitivity of some unpublished data, the download page is password protected and only accessable to the Summer School participants.
Invited Lecturers
Martin Brasier: Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Oxford, Martin is also a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford and he has been awarded the 2014 Lyell Medal. Martin’s major research interest focuses on: patterns and processes in the Cambrian explosion; origins of the animal phyla; the dynamics of reefal and foraminiferal symbioses through deep time; phosphorus and the carbon cycle in deep time; origins of terrestrial ecosystems; the earliest fossil record; and the origins of life itself. His current areas of field activity include the Archaean of Australia and the Proterozoic and Cambrian of Australia, Asia and Oman as well as Britain. 


Graham Shields: Professor of Geology at the Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, UK. Graham ‘s research direction is Isotope Geochemistry, Sedimentary Geology, Earth System science (Precambrian-Cambrian). He uses geochemical and isotopic tracers to study the evolutionary dynamics of our planet's oceans and atmosphere during the awakening of biological complexity amid climatic and tectonic upheaval: about 1000-500 million years ago.


Maoyan Zhu: Research Professor at Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Maoyan’s research interests focus on the origin and early evolution of animals, Ediacaran and Cambrian stratigraphy, involving research on the problematic invertebrate fossils, taphonomy of the fossil-lagerstätten, trace fossils, paleoecology and paleoenvironments, and integrated stratigraphy. Maoyan has been very active for international cooperation between China and other countries (Germany, Australia, the UK and USA) and played a key role for many of the combined projects. 


Simon Poulton: Chair in Biogeochemistry & Earth History at the School of Earth and Environment, Leeds University, UK. Simon’s research interest can be divided into four areas: 1. Chemical Evolution of the Earth's Biosphere.  2. Nutrient Availability Through Time. 3. Modern Redox Sensitive Environments. and 4. Experimental Reaction Kinetics and Mechanisms. Simon has been rewarded with NERC Fellowship (2005-2008) 'Chemical evolution of the Proterozoic biosphere' and Marie Curie Fellowship (2002-2004) 'Oceanic phosphorus cycling in modern and ancient metalliferous sediments' in the past.


Hongfei Ling: Professor of Geochemistry at the Department of Earth Sciences, Nanjing University, China. Hongfei was a visiting scholar from 1994 to 1995 at University of Cambridge; from 1995-1996 he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Oxford. His research interests focus on geochemistry (esp. Mo, Sr, Nd, C, S, N); Palaeoceanography and Mineralization of uranium. 
  

Xiangkun Zhu: Research Professor at Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. From 1997 onwards, his researches mainly focus on two kinds of projects: global climate change, and isotopes of transitional metals and their implications in geochemistry, cosmochemistry and biogeochemistry. These projects are still in progress, but some achievements have already been made, which include: Technical developments of Cu-, Fe-, and Zn-isotope analysis using plasma source mass spectrometry (MC-ICPMS) and Investigation of the natural variations of Fe, Cu and Zn isotopes and their potential to be used as tracers in geochemical and biological processes etc.


Changqun Cao: Research Professor at Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Changqun’s research interest focuses on the geochemical palaeoenvironment during the Permian-Triassic transition, particularly under the applications of stable C-isotope and molecular organic geochemistry. In recent years, Changqun’s researching field has been extended to the marine Permian Lopingian strata in southern China, especially on the investigations of C-isotopic excursions and lipid biomarker evidence. 


Topics of their talks

In search of the earliest signs of life on Earth
The emergence of eukaryotes
The emergence of animals

 









Chemostratigraphy
Carbon Isotope interpretations
Sulphur isotopes and Carbonate associated Sulphate







Age and rate -- temporal resolution of the earth-life co-evolution in deep time:Fundamental principles of Stratigraphy;
Sedimentology: the base for Stratigraphy and Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction












Redox Geochemistry
Redox Proxies
Redox controls on Nutrient Cycling











Principle of Mo Isotope composition as A Proxy of Global Oceanic Oxygenation State









A brief introduction to the history and analytical techneques of non-traditional stable isotopes
An overview of Fe isotope systematics
Case studies











Organic geochemistry and Biomarker lab training 













Field Course lecturers

Maoyan Zhu; Graham Shields

Changqun Cao




Fieldwork 

Ordovician Strata plus sampling protocols (Tangshan, Nanjing)

P-T GSSP site in Changxing County, Zhejiang province



© 2011-2015 All rights reserved. Life & the Planet | NERC