Alas, it was to be one more zoom meeting… Nonetheless some 15 of us participated to our general assembly on the 9th of June. Current (and future) PhD researchers presented their projects, and we discussed what we want to do in the near and not so near future.
We just hope that next time we’ll be able to have a proper meeting !
Two new PhD projects are starting in BuCoMO collaboration:
Helena Fest is starting a project on the Variscan plutons of South-Eastern French Massif Central. This follows on the successful Msc thesis presented by Mariana Werle: we found these rocks so interesting that we decided to carry on and expand the study ! So she will be looking at the whole family of porphyritic granites there, trying to unravel source and mantle contributions. This project will be supervised by Gary Stevens and Jean-François Moyen, with additional input from different people (Oscar Laurent and Alain Chauvet will most certainly contribute !).
Jean-Baptiste Combaz will be looking at the thermochronology of the Kaapvaal craton. He will focus on detrital minerals from sedimentary sequences to discuss the possible peaks that marked the lithosphere evolution there. This project is co-supervised by Gary Stevens and Oscar Laurent, again with several other contributors.
Welcome to both of them !
Sean Hoffman (MSc student, Stellenbosch) did start his project (with Matthew Mayne) some time ago already, but we are glad to formally include him in our cllaboration…
Mariana Werle completed her MSc on the lamprophyre dykes of the Aigoual pluton. The oral presentation (by Zoom) was given on the 10th of February, and was unanimously acclaimed as a great talk – Mariana was awarded a distinction, for a very nice work indeed !
A publication is currently being written…
First time in the field since CoVid… it was a rainy November in Barberton, but nevertheless it has been a productive trip.
Steve and Marcel both discovered Barberton geology. Marcel mapped and sampled components of the syenites around Badplaas. Steve, despite some car adventures in the mountains, reached various chert bands and sampled good sections below them.
Laurine, together with Alain and Jérémie, went hunting for addits, pit, trenches and disused mines to explore the structures of the quartz veins. They also have several tales to tell regarding unexpected encounters in the field, in particular with the various illegal miners who haunt the same places…
We were also fortunate to spend a bit of time with Christoph Heubeck (Uni Jena), currently organizing an ICDP drill project in the Moodies group. Christoph was kind enough to show us the drill sites, and also some other bits of geology around…
And lastly, the Stellenbosch crew (Gary, Alex, Bjorn, Tahnee, Mariana) came and met us for a few days, and we had an impromptu BuCoMO general assembly in the field…
Of course, returning to France proved a bit more difficult that expected for the French component of the trip…
Laurine Travers, Steve Kitoga, Marcel Vinicius, Tahnee Otto, Mariana Werle, Jérémie Lehmann, Alain Chauvet, Gary Stevens, Alex Kisters, Bjorn van der Heyden, Jean-François Moyen – Nov. 2021
At the end of 2021, we are glad to welcome three new PhD students into the BuCoMO project.
Steve Kitoga will embark on a project on the link between alteration of Archaean sedimentary rocks, and geochemical signatures in TTGs (as advertised here). Steve is a graduate from UJ, where he obtained a MSc degree under Prof. S. Tappe, with outstanding marks (85 %). CoVid willing, he will start in Stellenbosch in October ’21, be in the field in Barberton in November, and come to France (Clermont-Ferrand) late in 2022. This is truly a collaborative project involving many tools and places: JF Moyen (Clermont-Ferrand / St-Etienne), Gary Stevens (Stellenbosch), Maud Boyet (Clermont-Ferrand), Johanna Marin-Carbonne (Lausanne).
Marcel Vinicius Santos Leandro is starting a Stellenbosch-based PhD, under the supervision of Gary Stevens, and co-supervised by Alex Kisters and Jean-François Moyen. He did his undergraduate in Geological Sciences (2018) and master’s degree (2021) at the Federal University of Sergipe (Brazil). His doctoral research includes petrology, geochronology and isotope geochemistry, to understand the correlation between the Archean alkaline magmatism (i.e., ~3.1 Ga Boesmanskop Complex) and previously crustal recycling in the Kaapvaal Craton. Marcel will join us during the Nov’21 trip.
Brian Mapingere is also a UJ graduate, working towards his PhD degree with Jérémie Lehmann (and some input by Alain Chauvet, we hope he will be able to truly benefit from the BuCoMO collaboration). His work is structural and investigates the link between gold and deformation in the Mwanesi Greenstone Belt in Zimbabwe.
As of July 2021, this PhD has been awarded to Steve Kitoga.
We are happy to announce that we have available funding for one PhD project, to start in October 2021, working on the geochemistry of Archaean TTGs in Barberton. This project will be multi-national with a portion in Clermont-Ferrand (France), a portion in Stellenbosch (South Africa) and a component in Lausanne (Switzerland). See the atatched pdf for details.
Enquiries with J.-F Moyen
Application on CNRS jobs portal
Laurine Travers enrolled in a M2 in Montpellier with A. Chauvet, co-supervised by J. Lehmann at UJ. She was fortunate enough to manage a very succesful field trip in Malolotja, and of course the rest of the project was somewhat “covided”. She nonetheless succesfully completed and defended her MSc, and then got a PhD grant from Université de Montpellier to carry on on the same topic, with the same supervisors.
Laurine is working on the structural control of Gold mineralization in the Barberton belt. Congratulation for a succesful master and welcome and best of luck for your PhD !
Laurine Travers, Jun. 2020
In June 2020, despite complicated conditions…
Hugo Dominguez-Carranza started with BuCoMO for a M1 internship in Stellenbosch, and he carried on for his M2 (based in Lyon). He did field work in Limpopo in late 2019, under unseasonal rains, and then he was in Stellenbosch in March 2020 when the world became crazy. He was repatriated by his University, literally catching the last flight out of Cape Town before the airport closed. After which he was in lockdown for the rest of the time, and to his credit he nevertheless managed to propose a very nice Masters, that he defended (remotely) in June 2020.
You can read his work here:
We are also very glad to announce that Hugo accepted a PhD position in Bern, to work in Pierre Lanari’s CPaG group.
Congratulations !
H. Dominguez-Carranza, June 2020
In February 2020, three of us (Alain Chauvet, Jérémie Lehmann and Laurine Travers) went to Malolotja in Swaziland, in the (comparatively poorly known) Southern portion of the Barberton Greenstone belt. The goal was to understand the structural context of quartz and carbonate veins, and possibly of gold mines.
This was part of Laurine’s MSc (M2) work in Montpellier. Laurine has meanwhile obtained a PhD grant from Univ Montepplier (well done !) and will carry on on this project, as a “cotutelle” between Montpellier and Johannesburg.
Laurine’s work is closely related to a new MSc project at UJ by Biran Mapingere, undergoing similar studies in the Mwanesi Greenstone Belt of Zimbabwe.
A. Chauvet, J. Lehmann, L. Travers. Feb. 2020
We are very pleased indeed to report that BuCoMO’s first contribution to Nature (geoscience) is just out:
You want to read the whole story, here. It is based on TTG granitoids in the Southern part of the Barberton Terrain
… where the outcrops are not bad at all…
… and the rocks nice and fresh !
The story draws on petrology, geochemistry and geochronology and offers an unconventional view on the origin of Archaean granitoids, and the formation of Earth’s oldest continental crust.
O. Laurent & many others, Jan. 2020