Birger Rasmussen

I completed my BSc (Hons) at UWA and subsequently joined WAPET (now Chevron Australia) as Petroleum Geologist working on the Gorgon gasfield in the northwest Shelf, Australia. After completing my PhD, I returned to UWA as a research fellow working on a government-industry project investigating the link between hydrocarbon migration and MVT mineralization.

Thereafter, I was awarded a series of Australian Research Council (ARC) fellowships: i) ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (1997-1999) for research on tracing oil migration in Phanerozoic sedimentary basins, ii) ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship (2000-2005) on the use of rare-earth-element phosphate minerals (monazite, xenotime) to date major environmental and biological events in the Precambrian rock record, and iii) ARC Australian Professorial Fellowship (2011-2016) to investigate the early history of atmospheric oxygen and the Great Oxidation Event.

My current research is centred on understanding: 1) how ancient marine chemical sediments (i.e., banded iron formations) formed and what they tell us about ocean chemistry and biological processes on the early Earth, 2) Precambrian oil generation and migration, and the potential role of hydrocarbons in fossilization and the formation of ore deposits, 3) the origin and early evolution of life, 4) the ancient phosphorus cycle through time, 5) U-Pb dating and unravelling the magmatic and tectonothermal history of Precambrian cratons and orogenic belts, and 6) U-Pb geochronology of hydrothermal mineralization (iron-ore, gold, REE and base metals).