O'Neil at the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt in Northern Quebec, Canada. Photo by Don Francis.

DTM postdoctoral scientist Jonathan O’Neil will be awarded the 2011 Léopold Gélinas Gold Medal by the Volcanology and Igneous Petrology Division of the Geological Association of Canada (GAC).  The GAC awards up to three medals per year for the most outstanding theses written by Canadians or submitted to Canadian universities.  The medal will be presented to O’Neil in Ottawa on 26 May at the 2011 Joint Annual Meeting of the GAC with the Mineralogical Association of Canada, the Society of Economic Geologists, and the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits.

O’Neil’s thesis dealt with the geology and geochemistry of the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt in Northern Quebec, Canada.  With Staff Scientist Rick Carlson, O’Neil now conducts research on the isotopic geochemistry of rocks from this belt, which at 4.3 billion years of age is the oldest known segment of Earth’s crust.