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(revised 04/24/2008)
Events Geological Society of America 2008 Annual Meeting Topical Session 2008 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of GSA Memoir 74 by Tuttle & Bowen. This is the single most important publication ever in the field of crustal igneous rocks and one of the most significant ever in the whole field of petrology. This memoir showed that the “simple” granites, those dominated by quartz and feldspars, and the felsic rhyolites, have compositions which show that they formed by processes involving equilibrium between silicate melt, quartz and feldspars at temperatures of 650 degree C or higher, i.e. magmatic conditions. One of the great geological debates in the first half of the 20th century was over whether granites are igneous rocks or, alternatively, were formed by processes known collectively as "granitization". The debate over these origins was often quite bitter. Tuttle and Bowen resolved this debate in favour of the magmatic view. Seldom has a long-standing controversy been terminated so rapidly and elegantly. The conclusions in GSA Memoir 74 have been a basis for most studies carried out on granites over the last 50 years. It has been cited 1613 times in 49 years, and is now still being referenced close to 30 times a year. A symposium ("topical session") will be held at the 2008 AGM of the Geological Society of America to mark the 59th anniversary of publication. There will obviously be contributions from experimental petrologists, but it is expected that the majority of contributors would be concerned with the application of the Tuttle and Bowen, and later experimental studies, to broader questions of granite and rhyolite genesis, saturation or undersaturation of H2O in these magmas, other volatile elements, the use of trace elements, relationships between these felsic rocks and more mafic ones, and mineralization. We encourage you to submit an abstract for the symposium (see below). 2008 also marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of a very famous granite symposium published as GSA Memoir 28 - this was dominated by the magmatic vs granitization arguments. Also in 1948, the GSA published Memoir 29 on the granites of southern California by E.S. Larsen, another truly classic study of such rocks. So there are several significant anniversaries this year. Please contact any of us for further information. To submit an abstract: 4th International Symposium on Granitic Pegmatites (PEG 2009 Brazil) During the closing session of the International Symposium on Granitic Pegmatites: the state of the art – PEG 2007 in Porto-Portugal, from May 6th to 12th 2007, it was decided that another meeting on this subject should be held at Recife-Brazil, 2009, sponsored by the Federal University of Pernambuco. We accepted the challenge to organize this 4th International Biennial Meeting in Recife (after Prague 2003, Elba 2005 and Porto 2007) and we are now pleasured to welcome you on this website, with preliminary information about the program and possible fieldtrips, and a link to contact us: it would be very important for us to know if you intend to attend the technical sessions and conferences, and if you are interested in any of the two fieldtrips. Any other suggestions are welcome. So please contact us. The Organizing Committee For more information, see our website at: http://www.ufpe.br/geologia/peg2009brazil/ Gemological Research Conference
August 21-23, 2009 To explore the most recent technical developments in gemology and related sciences, the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) will host a second Gemological Research Conference. The program will feature invited lectures, submitted oral and poster presentations, panel discussions, and a gem photography competition and workshop. The Mineralogical Society of America will collaborate with GIA on hosting one of the conference sessions. Pre-and post-conference field trips will visit nearby gem pegmatite mines. For further information, contact Dr. James E. Shigley (tel. 760-603-4019 or e-mail: grc2009@gia.edu. David London (University of Oklahoma) and Dan Kontak (Laurentian University) are organizing a special session at the next GAC-MAC joint meeting in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, May 26-28, 2008. The session is entitled Challenges to a Genetic Model for Pegmatites. The purpose of this session is to focus attention on the important questions that will define the future of pegmatite research. These topics include the origins of pegmatites, the mechanisms of their emplacement as dikes, the causes of their chemical fractionation among cogenetic pegmatites, their thermal histories, and other unresolved issues of their internal evolution. Preliminary information about the session and the meeting is available at Please contact David London dlondon@ou.edu or Dan Kontak dkontak@laurentian.ca if you are interested in submitting a paper to this session. |
