Professor Martin Brasier


Professor of Palaeobiology

Email: martinb@earth.ox.ac.uk
TEL: +44 (1865) 272074
FAX: +44 (1865) 272072

Research Profile

Just how good are patterns in the fossil record for studying the origins of major biological groups?And just how good is our own mental equipment for interpreting those patterns when we discover them?

My first tentative answers to these questions emerged after a year spent as Ship's Scientist aboard HMS Fawn during its cruise across the reefs and lagoons of the Caribbean in 1970. From this I could see that it is the analysis of interconnections between and within systems that may provide a valuable key for decoding the early history of life. Ever since then, I have sought to increase and expand our understanding of big transitions in the fossil record, pushing the researches of my group ever deeper in geological time. All of those questions that interest me tend to relate some very major interconnections in deep time, notably: patterns and processes in the Cambrian explosion; origins of the animal phyla; the dynamics of reefal and foraminiferal symbioses through deep time; phosphorus and the carbon cycle in deep time; origins of terrestrial ecosystems; the earliest fossil record; and the origins of life itself.

Current areas of field activity include the Archaean of Australia and the Proterozoic and Cambrian of Australia, Asia and Oman as well as Britain. We often undertake active comparisons between recent and ancient ecosystems, and we like to pioneer innovative high resolution techniques, ranging from satellite imaging and field mapping to microscopic mapping using Confocal Microscopy, Laser Raman, NanoSims and other biogeochemical mapping techniques. All of these approaches are driven, however, by our search for innovative and provocative questions. Science is not a belief system - it is a unique system for the measurement of doubt.

Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Oxford, I am also a Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. Other duties have included serving as Chairman of the Faculty of Earth Sciences; Chairman of the Subcommission on Cambrian Stratigraphy; membership of NSF panels; membership of NASA panels on life on Mars. I also hold a Professorship at Memorial University, Newfoundland. My first popular science book “Darwin's Lost World” was published this year as a celebration of Darwin's 200th birthday.

Important resources available to my research group include: thousands of specimens relating to the origins of the major animal groups, accumulated during the last fifty years; thousands of polished thin sections relating to the earliest microscopic life; high quality Nikon Multiphot imaging facilities; a extensive library; and a field base for researchers and visitors on the coast of Pembrokeshire.

Selected Publications

  • Brasier, M.D. 2009. Darwin's Lost World: the hidden history of  animal life. Oxford University Press,. 322pp.
  • Brasier, M.D., Cotton, L.  & Yenney, I. 2009. First report of amber with spider webs and  microbial inclusions from the earliest Cretaceous (c. 140 Ma) of  Hastings, Sussecx. Journal of the Geological  Society,166. In press.
  • Brasier,  M.D. & Antcliffe, J.B. 2009. Evolutionary relationships within  the Avalonian Ediacara biota: new insights from Laser Analysis. Journal of the Geological Society,166,  363-384.
  • Brasier, M.D.  2009. Foreword. In Wacey, D. An  Atlas of Early Life and its Habitat.  Springer-Verlag.
  • Callow. R., H.T. &   Brasier, M.D. 2009. A solution to Darwin's Dilemma of 1859:  exceptional preservation in Salter's material from the Ediacaran  Longmyndian Supergroup, England. Journal of  the Geological Society, 166, 1-4.
  • Antcliffe,  J.B. & Brasier,  M.D. 2008. Charnia at fifty: developmental models for Ediacaran fronds. Palaeontology, 51, 11-26.
  • Brasier,  M.D., & Antcliffe,  J.B. 2008. Dickinsonia from Ediacara: a new look at morphology and body construction. Palaeogeography,  Palaeoclimatology,  Palaeoecology, 270, 311-323.
  • Brasier,  M.D. 2008. The Origins of Life. In Benton, M. (ed.),pp 23-26 The  Seventy Great Mysteries of the Natural World.  Thames & Hudson.
  • Wacey, D., Kilburn, M.,  McLoughlin, N., Parnell, J.,  Stoakes, C., Grosvenor, C. &  Brasier, M.D. 2008.Use of NannoSIMS in the search for early life on  Earth: ambient inclusion trails in a c, 3400 Ma sandstone. Journal  of the Geological Society, 165, 43-53.
  • McLoughlin,  N., Wilson, L.A. & Brasier, M.D. 2008. Growth  of synthetic stromatolites and wrinkle structures in the absence of  microbes: implications for the early fossil record. Geobiology.  6, 95-105.
  • Brasier, M.D. &  Callow, R.H.T. 2007. Changes in the patterns of phosphatic  preservation across the Proterozoic-Cambrian transition.  Memoirs of the Association of Australasian Palaeontologists, 34, 377-389.
  • Brasier,  M.D., McLoughlin, N., Green, O., Wacey, D. 2006. A  fresh look at the fossil evidence for early Archaean cellular  life. In Cavalier-Smith, T., Brasier, M.D. & Embley, T..M. (Eds)  Major Steps in Cell Evolution: Palaeontological, Molecular and  Cellular evidence of their timing and global effects. Philosophical  Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B,  volume 361, 887-902.
  • Lindsay,  J.F. & Brasier,  M.D. 2006. Impact craters as biospheric  microenvironments, Lawn Hill structure, Northern Australia. Astrobiology, 6, 348-363.
  • Brasier, M.D., Green,  O.R., Lindsay, J.F.,   McLoughlin, N., .F., Steele, A. & Stoakes,  C. 2005. Critical testing of Earth's oldest putative fossil  assemblage from the ~3.5 Ga Apex chert, Chinaman Creek, Western  Australia. Precambrian Research 140,55-102, 22 plates.
  • Brasier, M., Green, O.,  Lindsay, J. & Steele, A. 2004. Earth's oldest (c. 3.5Ga) fossils  and the 'Early Eden Hypothesis': questioning the evidence. Origins  of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 34,  257-260.
  • Brasier, M.D., Green,  O.R., Jephcoat, A.P., Kleppe, A.K., Van Kranendonk, M.J., Lindsay,  J.F., Steele, A. & Grassineau, N.V. 2002. Questioning the  evidence for Earth's oldest fossils. Nature 416, 76-81.
  • Lindsay,  J.F. & Brasier,  M.D. 2002. Did global tectonics drive  early biosphere evolution? Carbon isotope record from 2.6 to 1.9 Ga  carbonates of Western Australian basins. Precambrian  Research, 114, 1-34.
  • Brasier, M.D., McCarron,  G., Tucker, R., Leather, J., Allen, P.A., Shields, G. 2000. New U-Pb  zircon dates for the Neoproterozoic Gubrah glaciation and for the top  of the Huqf Supergroup, Oman. Geology,  28, 175-178.
  • Brasier, M.D. &  Shields, G. 2000. Neoproterozoic chemostratigraphy and correlation of  the Port Askaig glaciation, Dalradian Supergroup of Scotland. Journal  of the Geological Society, London, 157,  909-914.

Full Publications List

Published Books