ACCELERATING NEOPROTEROZOIC RESEARCH THROUGH SCIENTIFIC DRILLING

The Neoproterozoic Era through earliest Cambrian records geologic changes unlike any other in Earth history: supercontinental tectonics; a rise in oxygen that, perhaps for the first time in Earth history, resulted in the deep oceans becoming oxic; multiple(?) snowball Earths; biogeochemical perturbations; and, the evolutionary leap from eukaryotes to animals. Our understanding of this time interval, though, is overwhelmingly dependent on outcrop-based studies, which suffer from lack of continuity and, in many instances, deep weathering profiles which render certain types of geochemical analyses problematic. Furthermore, few mechanisms are in place to facilitate collaborative development of data and sample archives thus hampering our effectiveness.

An ICDP and ECORD sponsored Workshop has been held (March 2014) where representatives from the community worldwide discussed the pros and cons of establishing a collaborative, integrated, global drilling programme to obtain the high-quality continuous sections needed to advance our understanding of the Neoproterozoic. Such an initiative would be analogous to the IODP-based research of Cenozoic records of Earth System operation, and would be a platform to define structured collaborative research and discovery between cutting-edge interdisciplinary scientific studies and synergies with national agencies and industry partners.

A number of target sites have been identified, however a major point of discussion is the nature of the first stage of scientific drilling projects: do we first attempt to recover a long-ranging (a few hundred Myr) record from a single location, or focus on obtaining ‘time-slices’ wherein a more restricted interval of time (many tens of Myr) is targeted thereby obtaining a number of complementary coeval records from contrasting paleo-locations, or do a combination of both? Whilst this proposed initiative would seek enhanced collaboration the intention is not to drive interpretive consensus, but to focus collaborative efforts on the acquisition of archives, data, and enhancing their long-term utility. In the presentation we will, amongst other things, provide a summary of the Workshop discussions and the current version of the road map for moving forward.