Welcome to the Department of

EARTH & PLANETARY SCIENCE

University of California, Berkeley

307 McCone Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-4767
Phone: (510) 642-3993 • Fax: (510) 643-9980


EPS Research Spotlight

fig EPS faculty member Paul Renne and colleagues at the Berkeley Geochronology Center, the Free University of Amsterdam, and Utrecht University, are fine-tuning geochronology to unprecedented levels of accuracy. By calibrating the uniquely versatile 40Ar/39Ar radioisotopic dating method with climate proxy signals tracking Earths orbital cycles, the team reported a ten-fold increase in accuracy. As an illustration of the consequences of their study, reported in Science (reprint), the age of the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary, and the extinction of the dinosaurs, has been adjusted by almost 500,000 years to 65.95 Ma. UC Berkeley news release.

>> Research Spotlight Archive <<



Upcoming EPS Events

May 22, 2008 - EPS Commencement - 2pm, in The Playhouse



EPS News


May 2008 Each spring, the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the Association for Women Geoscientists (AWG) seeks nominations from Bay Area Universities to recognize undergraduate women who have excelled in their studies of earth sciences. Lan Ma, graduating senior in Atmospheric Science, has been selected by EPS faculty as UC Berkeley's AWG Outstanding Women Student of 2008. Read More...


Apr 2008 Senior EPS major Corina Cerovski-Darriau was the sole US Student representative to the International Year of Planet Earth launch event at UNESCO in Paris in February. She was selected for this honor by submitting a winning essay entitled “Hazards: Minimizing Risk, Maximizing Awareness.” Corina joined 130 students from 42 countries in Paris. Read More...


Apr 2008 Jim Watkins and Sean Ford are the EPS recipients of the 2008 Louderback Award Read More...


Apr 2008 Jim Watkins was awarded this year's Charles Meyer fellowship for his outstanding research accomplishments. Professor Meyer was an eminent faculty member specializing in ore deposits and starting the first quantitative geochemistry program in Berkeley. The Meyer fellowship is awarded for research in ore, mineral and rock-forming processes. Read More...



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