PhD: The Torridonian Mudstones: Implications for Early Life and Extraterrestrial Sedimentary Geology from the Neoproterozoic Diabaig Formation

Mudrock is a crucial geological lithology, both as an archive of sedimentary environments and a regulating component of the Earth system (sequestering chemically-weathered clays). Ongoing research suggests the deposition of mudrock throughout Earth history has not been uniformitarian: the evolution of land plants in the Palaeozoic provided the means of both producing more mud through weathering, and retaining more mud in sedimentary conduits (rivers) through binding and baffling. Non-marine mudrock is rare before the evolution of vegetation, but insights into such exceptional occurrences are key to understanding how non-uniformitarian the ancient mudrock record is, how and where mud may have been deposited on other (presumably abiotic) planets (e.g., Mars) and the environmental context of some of Earth’s oldest fossils. Sedimentary rocks that accumulated in ancient lake basins are crucial archives of such material, and this research will create a robust sedimentological framework for the Diabaig Formation (a mudrock-rich interval of the Precambrian “Torridonian Sandstones”, Scotland); producing a critical case study for developing an understanding of deep time mudrock deposition.