The Triassic – Jurassic (TJ) transition is well known as one of the big five mass extinctions in the Phanerozoic. In the North Sea region, it represents a major environmental change from a warm (semi)arid climate represented by the “Grey and red Beds” followed on top by the Åre Formation representing delta plain deposits (swamps and channels) indicating a change to more humid climate. The stratigraphic correlation is based on plant mesofossils, such as mega spores. Other (organic walled) microfossils (pollen / spores) are rare because of unfavorable coarse-grained sedimentary facies. The environmental changes around the TJ transition is stratigraphically not well constrained.
The MSc project involves the analysis of sedimentary organic matter and organic walled microfossils (pollen, spores, and algae remains) with focus on fine grained sediments and lignite intervals.
Goal:
Reconstruction of palaeoenvironment changes and (bio)stratigraphic correlation with TJ sections in the German & British Triassic basins correlation based on palynological / palynofacies analysis.
Methods:
Sampling of wells (& cores), extraction of sedimentary organic matter, preparation of microscope slides, digitalization of slides, analysis of particles incl. identification, classification and counting of organic walled microfossils, TOC and C-isotope analysis, training machine learning for digital slides for recognition and counting of microfossils (optional)
Background required:
sedimentology and micropaleontology, affinity with microscopy and imaging techniques, computer skills to use imaging software, eventually programing of Image analysis for automated particle recognition (course at IKT IN4310 – Deep Learning for Image Analysis – Universitetet i Oslo is recommended)
Material:
Material is available from wells (cuttings) and cored intervals offshore Norway stored in the core repository of the Norwegian Offshore Directorate. Additional fieldwork in Ireland, England or NW-Germany for collecting material is optional.