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Please bring the following opportunity to the attention of any of your students who may be interested in pursuing Master's degrees in metamorphism/tectonics/geochronology. We have new funding from NSF for the following project, will support several theses. Thanks, Calvin Miller Evolution of the Southern Appalachians: Contributions from Ion Microprobe Dating of Zircon, Blue Ridge and Inner Piedmont, TN-NC-SC-GA The southern Appalachians record a classic example of mountain building. However, despite well over a century of study and present agreement that they owe their existence to accretion of fragments of continents and island arcs to North America during the Paleozoic, critical aspects of the evolution of the range remain enigmatic and/or highly controversial. Uncertainty stems in large part from a paucity of reliable geochronological information that is needed to establish the timing and constrain the nature of key events in the history of the mountain belt. We intend to use ion microprobe dating to complement field and geochemical studies in an effort to clarify the events that affected this orogen, addressing the following questions: … How do time-space relations of magmatism constrain melt generating mechanisms and tectonic history? … What are the relationships of metamorphosed sedimentary sequences to each other?; how did their source terranes vary?; what are the implicit constraints on structural evolution? … When did high grade (including subduction-related)metamorphism occur, and does this timing relate to magma generation and large-scale tectonics? … How do the ages of ancient terranes indicated by pluton inheritance, detrital zircons, and basement data constrain ancient crustal configurations and possible long-distance transport of terranes? For more information, please contact: Professor Calvin Miller Department of Geology Vanderbilt University P.O. Box 105, Station B Nashville, TN 37235 Phone: (615) 322-2232 FAX: (615) 322-2138 email: [log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%