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NEW PAPER: The plant biostratigraphy of the Cenozoic coal-bearing formations in Primorye, Russian Far East

The Russian Far East has magical connotations. Perhaps no other place on Earth is so well known; yet so little visited. Most Westerners will be (or should be) enthralled by the word Siberia. The furthest part of Siberia is the Far East. Though remote, it nevertheless has had a tremendous amount of geological studies applied […]

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Something Wicked This Way Comes* – in the Lower Cretaceous

No, not a dinosaur. Not an asteroid. But some kind of climatic condition that was none-to-good for organic material. For a very very long time. Over the last year, my colleagues Prof Jian Shen and Prof Marvin Moroeng from China University of Mining and Technology (Xuzhou, China) and University of Johannesburg (South Africa), respectively, and […]

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NEW PAPER: Recognition of peat depositional environments: A review

It is already the most downloaded paper for the International Journal of Coal Geology*. No wonder – a fundamental attribute of any rock is knowing how it gets there. Sure, coal comes from peat, but it is those small changes in peat type that result in large differences in coal type and those differences result […]

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Come to Colombia: Annual Meeting of The Society of Organic Petrology in Bogotá in 2022

The 39th Annual Meeting of The Society for Organic Petrology will be held in Bogotá, Colombia in September 2022. Colombia is known for many things of course – its divine coffee, the incredible hospitality of its people, the range of climates and the beautiful Andes. But what most people don’t know is that under that lovely exterior […]

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Babel (redux balal)

My father worked for the phone company all his life. Actually, that isn’t completely true. In 1943, during World War II, he joined the Marines, got married and managed not to get killed. After the war he returned to his job at the C&P Telephone Co., played around on boats in and around the Potomac […]

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(Not) Freezing in Inner Mongolia

Thirty seconds seems like an incredibly short amount of time. But a lot of things can happen in thirty seconds. I had removed one of my gloves to turn the page in my field notebook to jot down some measurements on the coal we were sampling. It was a bad idea. In that short amount […]

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Queensland University of Technology/China University of Mining and Technology 2nd Annual Field Trip

The second year of this field trip saw us going up the southern Queensland coast looking at both the modern and ancient geological environments. The students are first and second years, from the School of Resources and Geosciences from Xuzhou, China and come for 15 days. In almost all cases this is the first time […]

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Fire and Brimstone in the Cretaceous

The Hailaer Basin in Inner Mongolia, China has a lot of coal, mostly of Cretaceous age; some beds are over 40 m in thickness. Setting aside any of its economic uses, the scale of peat accumulation is phenomenal. The basin itself is tectonically dissected into coal fields ranging in size distribution from 20×80 km to 40×120 […]

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QUT and CUMT Field Trip in Queensland

In early August of this year (2018), Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia conducted a field trip for undergraduate geologists from China University of Mining and Technology (CUMT), Xuzhou, China. Over the last year in my dual roles as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Earth, Environmental and Biological Sciences, QUT and […]

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Still an interesting read – COAL: A Human History

A while ago I reviewed a book on coal. Recently I saw it on my book shelf and thought it might be interesting to put that review up on the Cipher blog. Below is a slightly abridged version of the original review. Enjoy. I knew something was up when upon entering the shop the friend […]

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