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Discover “Microscopic Fossils in Eastern Caribbean Geological History” at UWI

For Release Upon Receipt - November 19, 2013

St. Augustine


ST. AUGUSTINE, Trinidad and Tobago – This Thursday, the Open Lectures Committee of The University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine will host the Professorial Inaugural Lecture of Professor Brent Wilson titled "Small Things Can Tell Big Stories: Microscopic Fossils in Eastern Caribbean Geological History." 

As a Palaeontologist and Geologist, Professor Brent Wilson is a noted authority on the living and fossil microscopic organisms of Trinidad, the eastern Caribbean Sea and the Northern Atlantic Ocean. According to Wilson, “The eastern Caribbean Sea straddles the crumpled and faulted boundaries between the Caribbean, South American and North American tectonic plates.  Consequently, the region contains some of the world’s most complex palaeo-oceanography and geology.  Micropalaeontology – the study of fossils mostly smaller than 1 mm – is used in the oil and gas industry to determine the age and environment of deposition of marine sedimentary rocks encountered in hydrocarbon wells. It has great promise as a tool for deciphering the region’s oceanographic and geological history, compilations of the results from micropalaeontological work showing how our region has evolved over geological time.” His lecture will illustrate the potential of this tool using four case studies from the Eastern Caribbean and Trinidad and Tobago, covering the past 12 million years. 

The lecture will be held at Lecture Theatre 1, Block 13, Faculty of Engineering from 5:30pm. All are invited.

For further information, please contact the Marketing and Communications Office at 662 2002 ext 83726. 

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About Professor Brent Wilson

Palaeontologist and Geologist Brent Wilson is a noted authority on the living and fossil microscopic organisms (Foraminifera and Ostracoda) of Trinidad, the eastern Caribbean Sea and the Northern Atlantic Ocean.  He has published over sixty referred papers and book chapters, and thirty technical reports.  A prizewinning and published poet, he is also a performed composer of classical music.  Although hailing from the UK, he lived from 1989 – 1997 in St. Kitts-Nevis, where he taught high school Physics, Mathematics and Geography.  During his spare time there he studied the relationships between modern foraminifera living on marine plants and pollution. The story of his time on Nevis is told in his autobiography Living on an Arc: A Caribbean Memoir. 

He has lived on Trinidad since 1998, where he first worked for five years as an industrial micropalaeontologist for the oil and gas industry. Since 2002, he has taught and researched micropalaeontology in the Petroleum Geoscience Programme at The UWI.  His research has focussed primarily on the ecostratigraphy – the stratigraphic changes in microfossil communities – of the last 16 million years and its use in high resolution correlation of sedimentary rock successions.  In addition, Brent has studied the impacts of oil-drilling facilities on seas around Trinidad and hurricanes on fisheries and shores around the Leeward Islands.  He has also applied micropalaeontology to solving geoarchaeological problems.  

He has presented research seminars at a) the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., b) the Bedford Institution of Oceanography, Dartmouth, Canada, c) Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada and d) IFM-Geomar-Institute, Kiel, Germany, and in 2013 delivered a workshop on biostratgraphy in association with the Geological Society of Trinidad and Tobago, for whom he is a regular speaker and former director.  Brent is a Fellow of the Geological Society of London and of the Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research, is the Caribbean correspondent for the popular magazine Geology Today and is an associate editor of the Journal of Foraminiferal Research. 

About UWI

Over the last six decades, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged University with over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest and most longstanding higher education provider in the English-speaking Caribbean, with main campuses in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and Centres in Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Christopher (St Kitts) & Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent & the Grenadines. UWI recently launched its Open Campus, a virtual campus with over 50 physical site locations across the region, serving over 20 countries in the English-speaking Caribbean. UWI is an international university with faculty and students from over 40 countries and collaborative links with over 60 universities around the world. Through its seven Faculties, UWI offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Pure & Applied Sciences, Science and Agriculture, and Social Sciences.

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.) 

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