UMPI geology professor to attend oceanography course in San Diego

PRESQUE ISLE — Dr. Kevin P. McCartney, assistant professor of geology at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, has been invited to participate in the National Science Foundation Oceanography Short Course Summer 1991.

Competitively selected in an international search, he is one of 40 people invited to attend the three-week expense-paid course.

The course will provide state-of-the-art information inexperience in sample collecting and data analysis, and new instructional materials and techniques. Targeted participants are instructors of courses with emphasis on physical or biological oceanography.

The project is based at the University of San Diego where participants will live and earn three graduate semester units in marine studies. Conducted jointly with the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District, the project will feature site visits to Scripps Institution of Oceanography, commercial marine facilities, U.S. Navy marine research operations, and an oceanographic station in Mexico. Field tours featuring modern coastal marine environments and Mesozoic-Cenozoic facies, and a research vessel trip will be included.

NSF funding covers tuition, room and board, course materials and expenses associated with project activities, plus a $250 weekly stipend.

McCartney has been asked to instruct a half-day seminar on microfossils that constitute the sediment for the NSF during the three-week program, as well.

McCartney will use information from the course to prepare a new marine geology course that will be offered at UMPI during the spring 1992 semester, according to UMPI officials.

McCartney also has received notification that two of his articles will be published in a book titled “Global Catastrophes and Earth History.” The book was developed from the international conference on impacts, volcanism and mass mortality, which he attended in November 1988. The last such volume, published in 1981, generated a large number of sales because of the interest in the controversial theory of mass extinction.

The 1988 conference was devoted to the investigation of mass extinctions, such as that of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

McCarthy’s article reviewed evidence supporting a large and unusual volcanic event as a cause of the dinosaur extinction. The article suggests a correlation between large flood basalt deposits and mass extinction events. One of the largest known outpourings of volcanic material occurred in India at the time of the dinosaur demise. The immense flow of lava would introduce gases into the atmosphere, perhaps contributing to a “greenhouse effect.”