Earth's History
July 26-31
Marion Garçon
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
Carnegie Institute of Washington
Marion Garçon’s research focuses on the formation and evolution of the Earth’s continental crust through time. She’s using chemical and isotopic compositions recorded by minerals from sediments to infer the age and composition of their continental sources.
Marion received her B.S. degree in Physics and Chemistry, from Grenoble University, France, in 2007. In 2009, she completed her Master studies in Earth Sciences at Grenoble University. Her thesis work focused on the chemical and Nd-Hf isotopic compositions of beach placers from the Rhone River drained the French Alps and Massif Central. In 2012, she earned her Ph.D. degree in Earth Sciences at Grenoble, France, under the supervision of Prof. Catherine Chauvel. Her Ph.D. project mainly focused on Nd, Hf, Pb and Sr isotopic systematics of Himalayan river sediments collected in Nepal, Bangladesh and India. She examined the composition of bed load, suspended load and pure mineral fractions separated from Himalayan sediments to study the composition, formation and evolution of the Himalayan continental crust. Using her data on Himalayan sediments, she provided new constrains on the decoupling of Nd and Hf in the Earth’s mantle through subduction zones and she was able to estimate a new value for the average Pb isotopic composition of the Earth’s upper continental crust.
In September 2013, Marion joined the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM), Carnegie Institution of Washington, as a Carnegie postdoctoral fellow. At DTM, her research focus on Nd and Hf isotope systematics of Archean sedimentary rocks (sandstones, siltstones and shales) from the Barbeton Greenstone belt in South Africa and from the Superior Province in Canada. She is interested in the provenance of these sedimentary rocks and the degree to which isotopic variability would record the geological history of the highland source of the detrital grains.
