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Robert Darling, professor of geology at SUNY-Cortland, will discuss “Cristobalite in Adirondak Garnet: A Remarkable Case of Mineral Preservation” noon today in Van Wickle Hall room 108.
The talk is sponsored by the department of geology and environmental geosciences. Lunch will be provided at no cost to students and for $3 to faculty and staff.
“I’ll be talking about the occurrence of an unusual mineral (cristobalite) that I discovered in the Adirondack Mountains of New York,” says Darling. “Cristobalite has the same chemical formula as quartz and should have changed to quartz after it formed. The fact that it did not suggests to mineralogists that we don’t fully understand why certain minerals, such as diamonds, get preserved at the surface of the Earth.”
He earned his Ph.D. at Syracuse University in 1992 and has taught at SUNY-Cortland since that fall.
“I chaired the geology department from 1999 to 2002, but saw the light and stepped down!” Darling notes.
He teaches the courses Earth Sciences, Physical Geology, Mineralogy, Petrology, and Geology of New York State. His interests include petrogenesis of Adirondack igneous and metamorphic rocks, geochemistry of fluid inclusions, and experimental petrology, including cold-seal and quench furnace methods.