Professor Geoffrey Eglinton, FRS

Professor Geoffrey Eglinton image
  • Position: Emeritus Professor and Senior Research Fellow in Earth Sciences
  • Additional Position(1): Adjunct Scientist in Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Mass., USA
  • Additional Position(2): Adjunct Professor in Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
  • Contact Address: 7 Red House Lane, Bristol BS9 3RY, UK
  • Telephone: +44 (0)117 9683833
  • Email: geoffrey.eglinton@dartmouth.edu
  • Academic Interests: Molecular Markers in Palaeoclimate Assessment

Research

I mostly work at home, collaborating especially with Professsr Juergen Rullkoetter at Oldenburg University in North Germany. Currently we are completing a nine site North-South transect in the South Atlantic off Southern Africa. The study relates the distributions and isotopic contents of individual n-alkane and n-alkanol homologues to the contents of different pollen grains in the sediment cores at 4 time horizons over the last 130 K years. Particular interest lies in the signals these proxies give concerning the extent of C4 grasslands and deserts versus C3 forests during glacials and interglacials. The Oldenburg group is also conducting surveys of the leaf wax compositions and isotopic distributions of a wide range of tropical and sub-tropical grasses and other contemporary plant species as a means of improving the value of these proxies in assessing phytogeography.

I have another long standing collaboration in the development of these proxies with Professor Meixun Zhao ,who was at Dartmouth College but has now recently joined Tongji University at Shanghai. His work is in their use in exploring the past vegetation of the Chinese mainland and also the application of the UK37 SST measure in the palaeooceanography of the South China Sea.

Another collaboration has been with Professor Alayne Street–Perrott of the Geography Department, University of Swansea. We have been mainly concerned with interpreting the lipid record as part of multi-proxy studies of African lake sediments.

Recent Publications

Street-Perrott, F. A., Ficken, K. J., Huang, Y. and Eglinton, G. (2004) Late Quaternary changes in carbon cycling on Mount Kenya, East Africa: an overview of the 13C record in lacustrine organic matter. Quaternary Science Reviews 23, 861-879.

Zhang, Z., Zhao, M., Yang, X., Wang, S., Jiang, X., Oldfield, F. and Eglinton G. (2004) A hydrocarbon biomarker record for the last 40 kyr of plant input to Lake Heqing, S.W. China. Organic Geochemistry 35, 595-613.

Eglinton, G. and Pancost, R. (2004) Immortal molecules (Wollaston Address). Geoscientist 14, 4-16.

Haug, G. H., Ganopolski, A., Sigman, D. M., Rosell-Melé, A., Swann, G. E. A., Tiedemann, R., Jaccard, S. L., Bollmann, J., Maslin, M. A., Leng, M. J. and Eglinton, G. (2005) North Pacific seasonality and the glaciation of North America 2.7 million years ago. Nature 433, 821.

Zhao, M., Mercer, J.L., Eglinton, G., Higginson, M.J., and Huang ,C-Y. (2006). Comparative molecular biomarker assessment of phytoplankton palaeoproductivity for the last 160 kyr off Cap Blanc, N.W. Africa. Organic Geochemistry, 37, 72 - 97.

Zhang, Z., Zhao,M., Eglinton, G., Lu ,H., and Huang, C-Y. (2006). Leaf wax lipids as paleovegetational and paleonvironmental proxies for the Chinese Loess Plateau over the last 170 kyr. Quaternary Science Reviews, 25, 575 - 594.

Rommerskirchen, F., Eglinton, G., Dupont, L. and Rullkoetter, J., (2006).Glacial/Interglacial changes in Southern Africa: Compoiund specific 13C land plant biomarker and pollen records from South East Atlantic continental margin sediments. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 7, Q 08010, doi: 10.1029/2005 GC001223.

Rommerskirchen, G., Plader, A., Eglinton, G., Chikaraishi, Y., and Rullkoetter, J., (2006). Chemotaxonomic significance of distribution and stable Isotopic composition of long chain alkanes and alkan-1-ols in C4 grass waxes. Organic Geochemistry 37, 1303-1332.