University of Tasmania, Australia

Dr Peter McGoldrick

Senior Lecturer

Contact Details

Teaching Responsibilities

• KEA101 – Understanding Earth Systems (co-ordinator)
• KEA208 – Earth’s Materials and Interior (co-ordinator)
• KEA270 – Marine Geosciences
• KEA341 – Economic Geology
• KEA343 – Mineral Exploration

Career Summary

Dr Peter McGoldrick is a senior lecturer in the School of Earth Sciences and a senior research fellow in CODES. He completed a BSc (Hons) at the University of Melbourne in 1976 and subsequently worked as a technical officer in Reid Keays radiochemical laboratory, before completing a PhD (supervised by Reid) on the geochemistry of the Mount Isa Cu-Pb-Zn orebodies. In 1986-87 he was postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tasmania working on western Tasmanian VHMS deposits. He spent the next three and half years as a field geologist in the Kalgoorlie office of the Geological Survey of Western Australia. In 1991, at Ross Large's invitation, he returned to UTAS to lead research into Proterozoic sedimentary zinc systems. This work, funded by AMIRA and the ARC for nearly a decade, supported a team of researchers, and several of these went on to be senior researchers in CODES. In the early part of the last decade he led a group researching sedimentary Cu deposits in Zambia and South Australia. More recently his research interests have turned to re-examine bio-geochemical aspects of Proterozoic SEDEX Zn systems. This work (a collaboration with UC-Riverside researchers) has broad implications for secular changes in ocean chemistry and the evolution and diversification of eukaryotes.

Research Activity

Peter is recognised internationally as an expert on northern Australian sedimentary base metal deposits. His current research is aimed at:

1. Using sediment geochemistry to decipher the redox structure of the Precambrian oceans and the implications this has for the origin of multicellular organisms;
2. Understanding the role played by organisms in the formation of sedimentary base metal deposits (particularly Proterozoic Zn-Pb deposits).

More specifically, one study is being undertaken to document microbial textures, microfossils and macroscopic organisms from the earliest Mesoproterozoic Century deposit in north Queensland; and a second is using iron-speciation analyses to decipher the sedimentary redox environment of Horodyskia-bearing rocks from the Rocky Cape Group in North-West Tasmania.

Publications

• View full list of UTAS refereed publications here
  

Research Project/s

• P1A3 Global ocean chemistry, marine basins and mineralisation