Drilling
OL-92 core in Owens Lake sediments, eastern California.
Reversals of the Earth's magnetic field occur rapidly and
at random intervals. Thus the distinctive magnetic imprint
of alternating polarity in rocks has allowed the establishment
of synchronous time horizons of very high resolution on
a world-wide basis, and these have been dated to varying
degrees of accuracy back to Jurassic time. These efforts
continue today in many laboratories, the fruit of which
is a magnetic polarity time scale of ever improving quality
that has proved valuable in a great variety of applications
across the Earth sciences. In our lab we carry out magnetostratigraphic
studies on samples from marine and lacustrine cores and
from outcrops. Members of our group have served as shipboard
paleomagnetists on seven Ocean Drilling Project cruises
that focused on problems in marine geology, plate tectonics,
and paleoclimatology.
