Dr. Conall Mac Niocaill visiting fellow 2002 Departmental Lecturer in Earth Sciences Department of Earth Sciences,  University of Oxford,  Parks Road, OX1 3PR,  United Kingdom Phone : +44 (0) 1865-282135 (office)  Phone : +44 (0) 1865-272051 (Lab)  Fax: +44 (0) 1865-272072  conallm@earth.ox.ac.uk Homepage at Oxford

Research of Conall MacNiocaill

The late Neoproterozoic marks one of the most enigmatic periods of Earth history, with major changes in seawater chemistry (based on carbon and strontium isotopes), major plate reorganisations associated with plate velocities possibly in excess of 25 cm/yr, and a possible 'Icehouse' climate: the so-called Snowball Earth. 

A proper evaluation of the Snowball Earth hypothesis has been hampered by a relative paucity of reliable palaeomagnetic data, not only for the glacial deposits themselves, but also for the major palaeo-continents, which have significant data-gaps for Vendian-Cambrian time.  Detailed paleomagnetic investigations of late Neoproterozoic - Cambrian sequences from East Greenland and Arabia are being carried out, to help constrain their paleogeographic settings at this time. 
Part of the sabbatical stay is allocated to the paleomagnetic analysis of Paleozoic red beds from the Russian and Siberian platforms in the framework of an INTAS project.