Linguistics and archaeology have been, and continue to be, entwined in the discourse on the early human history of the Pacific. It is commonly assumed, explicitly or otherwise, that the bearers of the Lapita culture were speakers of Proto-Oceanic, the ancestor of the Austronesian languages of most of the Pacific. In this discursive piece, the chronological data for the location and timing of th...

Abstract Widespread oceanic anoxia, biological crises, and volcanic activity are associated with the onset of Early Aptian (ca. 120 Ma) Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a (OAE1a). Reconstructions deoxygenation its links to broadly contemporaneous volcanism, however, remain poorly resolved. We use geochemical data, including δ53Cr ratios rare Earth element abundances, define timing tempo submarine volcanis...

In this project our long-term goal is to determine the ways and degrees to which realistically complex oceanic and atmospheric simulation models have an irreducible imprecision, hence an irreducible uncertainty in their analysis and forecast products. This goal is a natural accompaniment to the goal of continuing the evolution of the Regional Oceanic Modeling System (ROMS) as a multi-scale, mul...

Oceanic islands have long been important in evolutionary biology. Land snails are a major component of oceanic island biotas and have much to offer as systems for addressing major questions in evolution and biogeography. We review patterns of within-archipelago biogeography and diversifi cation in two large Hawaiian land snail groups, the Succineidae and the Achatinellinae. Molecular studies su...

Background: Adaptive radiation in the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is dramatic, highly replicated, and predictable. Goals: Test hypotheses that divergent phenotypes of freshwater threespine stickleback evolve at the same rate as in other species and that derived freshwater and ancestral oceanic (i.e. marine or anadromous) phenotypes are genetically additive. Update a model fo...

The role of coccolithophores in the biogenic carbonate cycle was studied in the coastal upwelling zone off Concepción, Chile (36°S), and in adjacent oceanic waters during spring 2004. Coccolithophore abundance and diversity increased steadily from coastal to oceanic regions. The presence of an active coastal upwelling center clearly partitioned the study area into coastal, transition and two oc...

S U M M A R Y The structure of the oceanic crust conforms in general to a very simple model. However, fine-scale variations of this structure in anomalous regions (such as beneath oceanic islands) remain poorly resolved. Here we examine teleseismic receiver functions (RFs) computed at four permanent broadband seismic stations on islands in the Pacific region. The RF method is ideal for examinin...

This work employs high-resolution 3D thermomechanical numerical models of the incipient oceanic spreading to investigate nucleation and long-term evolution of ridge-transform spreading patterns. The Eulerian–Lagrangian visco-plastic model allows for large strains and accounts for plate cooling by both heat conduction and hydrothermal circulation as well as for partial melting of the asthenosphe...

[1] Pressure-release melting at mid-ocean ridges generate compositional and rheological layering in the oceanic mantle that may control the evolution of the oceanic lithosphere. We use dynamic models coupled with melting and petrological models to explore 1) the influence of this layering on the development of small-scale convection under the oceans, 2) its role in determining the thickness of ...