Sarah P. Slotznick

|Assistant Professor
Academic Appointments

Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences

Iron is the most abundant transition metal in the Earth's crust; as such, it is a key player in the planetary redox budget and it utilized by nearly all life.  Iron is present in a diverse suite of minerals and is the crucial component in magnetic minerals such natural "permanent" magnets.  The research in my group centers on using iron minerals to understand the (co)evolution of Earth's surface environments and life and the fidelity of the rock record in preserving ancient bio- and environmental signatures.  Integrating magnetic, textural, and geochemical tools with field observations, we probe questions spanning geologic time from the Modern to the Archean, with each time period providing distinct perspectives into the interaction of the biosphere and the Earth.

Contact

603-646-3101
Steele, Room 223
HB 6105

Department(s)

Earth Sciences

Education

  • S.B. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009
  • M.S. California Institute of Technology, 2012
  • Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 2016

Selected Publications

  • Slotznick, S. P., Swanson-Hysell, N.L., Zhang, Y., Clayton, K.E., Wellman, C.H., Tosca, N.J., Strother, P.K. (2023) Reconstructing the paleoenvironment of an oxygenated Mesoproterozoic shoreline and its record of life. Geological Society of America Bulletin. doi: 10.1130/B36634.1

  • Slotznick, S. P., Johnson, J. E., Rasmussen, B. Raub, T. D., Webb, S. M., Zi, J.-W., Kirschvink, J. L., Fischer, W. W. (2022) Re-examination of 2.5 Ga "Whiff" of Oxygen Interval Points to Anoxic Ocean Before GOE. Science Advances. 8, eabj7190.

  • Green, T., Slotznick, S. P., Jaqueto, P., Raub, T. D., Tohver, E., Playton, T. E., Haines, P. W., Kirschvink, J. L., Hocking, R. M., Montgomery, P. (2021) High-resolution late Devonian magnetostratigraphy from the Canning Basin, Western Australia: A re-evaluation. Frontiers in Earth Sciences. 9, 757749.

  • Slotznick, S.P., Sperling, E.A., Tosca, N J., Miller, A.J., Clayton, K., van Helmond, N.A.G.M., Slomp, C.P., and Swanson-Hysell, N.L. (2020) Unraveling the mineralogical complexity of sediment iron speciation using sequential extractions. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 20, e2019GC008666.