ACA PhD graduate David Flannery heads off to JPL

David Flannery has submitted his PhD thesis to the University of New South Wales and has jetted off to California to commence a postdoctoral fellowship at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. David’s PhD research at the ACA focussed on depositional settings and stromatolites of the ~2.7 Ga Fortescue Group in Western Australia, where he found evidence, in the form of characteristic microbial fossils, that strongly suggests some stromatolites were constructed by cyanobacteria.

David’s projects at JPL include a focus on earlier evidence for life on Earth and Martian rover instrument development.

FLANNERY, D.T & WALTER, M.R. (2012): Archean tufted microbial mats and the Great Oxidation Event: new insight into an ancient problem, Australian Journal of Earth Sciences. DOI:10.1080/08120099.2011.607849

COFFEY JM, FLANNERY DT, WALTER MR, GEORGE SC. (2013) Sedimentology, stratigraphy and geochemistry of a stromatolite biofacies in the 2.72 Ga Tumbiana Formation, Fortescue Group, Western Australia. Precambrian Research, 236, 282-296.