Research seminars

Both external and internal speakers are invited to the School of Geography, Geology and the Environment to present the latest results of their research.

Everyone is invited, so please join us!

Piecing together the Scotia Sea jigsaw and the onset of Cenozoic glaciation in Antarctica

Wednesday 4 February 2026, 1.00pm, Attenborough 208

Teal Riley, Survey Geologist, British Antarctic Survey

Global cooling at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary (c. 34 Ma) and during the mid-Miocene climate transition (c. 14 Ma) led to the accelerated growth of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and associated deep ocean cooling.

The roles played by a developing Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) and the influence of Antarctic Bottom Water in driving these shifts to an ‘icehouse’ world are poorly understood. This is a direct consequence of poorly constrained, often conflicting, tectonic models of the emerging Drake Passage-Scotia Sea region that are used for developing palaeo-climate-oceanographic models.

The tectonic configurations are often based on plate reconstructions or ‘cartoon’ models, with no solid geological, geophysical, or kinematic basis. This is especially true for plate reconstructions of the Drake Passage-Scotia Sea region, as the opening involved the translation of at least twelve individual crustal blocks, including South Georgia and the South Orkney Islands.

The starting position of these microcontinental blocks, their translation and uplift history, and opening of deep ocean basins are critical to influencing flow pathways of a nascent ACC.

Teal is an UoL Alumni having studied BSc (Hons) Geology, 1988-1991.

Disentangling the interplay between life and environment across the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition

Wednesday 18 February 2026, 1.00pm, Attenborough 208

Professor Alex Liu, Professor of Palaeobiology, University of Cambridge

The early evolutionary history of animals, and specifically the establishment of the bodyplans of the major animal phyla, played out over a protracted interval spanning the late Ediacaran (~574-539 Mya) to early Cambrian (539-510 Mya) periods.

In addition to a clear first-order trend of increasing diversity and disparity across this interval, analyses of global palaeontological data have been argued to support multiple pulses of evolutionary radiation and extinction. 

In this talk, Professor Alex Liu will present recent work by his group to determine the extent to which environmental parameters have shaped our perception of Ediacaran-Cambrian evolutionary events. Consideration of palaeogeographic and facies-scale sedimentological data permits recognition of sampling biases, taphonomic variability, and palaeoecological inequality between fossil localities at local and regional scales.

Decoupling such environmental parameters from original evolutionary signals challenges both the paradigm of coherent late Ediacaran biotic assemblages, and claims of major mass extinction or biotic replacement events prior to the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary.

Professor Alex Liu is a palaeobiologist whose research focuses on the fossil record of the earliest animals. His research includes investigation of: the late Ediacaran fossil record (spanning the geological interval ~580 to 539 million years ago when the earliest recognisable animals diversified throughout the global oceans); the sedimentary record of glacial conditions through time; Ediacaran-Cambrian palaeogeography; and the preservation of soft tissues in the rock record.

He combines biological, ecological, sedimentological and analytical approaches to resolve the early evolutionary history of animals, and the interplay between biological evolution and major environmental change.