A belated welcome to some awesome undergrads working in the lab this semester! Welcome Kate, Ben, Dana, Emily, and Justin.

Ben Johnson will be presenting at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting! The meeting is virtual, so check out his talk on the meeting site if you're registered, or on the new youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF7lCo5x8lavl5YaaWsIfaA

Our new paper, published in Nature Geoscience, came out last week! We used oxygen isotopes in Archean ocean crust as a record of seawater oxygen isotope composition. Our main finding suggests there was really little emergent continental crust, and the Earth may have resembled a water world. Take a read here: https://rdcu.be/b2pgB

We've also been getting some fun press with this study, check out some interviews and articles below:

• CBC Quirks and Quarks interview (7:35)
• Iowa Public Radio River to River interview (22:00)
• University of Colorado and Iowa State University Press Releases
• Story in The Guardian
• Story on CNN
  

Happy 2020 all! The Johnson Earth History Group (the name for now until we come up with a better acronym) is officially here at Iowa State! We're (aka just Ben for now) excited to start building our group and research program. We'll start reviewing grad applications soon, attempt to navigate purchasing big lab equipment, and Ben will teach Earth History (GEOL102) starting next week. Here's hoping we all bring Thea energy into the new year.

Dr. Johnson, along with Drs. Xinyang Chen, Sanjoy Som, and Colin Goldblatt, are convening a session at AGU's fall meeting titled "Evolution of the Earth System". We will have invited talks from Dr. Carl Simpson (CU Boulder) on evolution during Snowball Earth and Dr. Kristin Bergmann (MIT) on climate and carbonates during the Neoproterozoic. There will be a number of exciting presentations and posters covering all of Earth history! Hope to see you in San Francisco. 

Dr. Ben Johnson will begin an Assistant Professor job at Iowa State University in January 2020! The group is looking for new members, including graduate students and postdocs, so please get in touch!