CONAN Division

Geologic Crucible

CONAN is the Washburn CHAOS Lab’s geologic systems division, focused on the rocks, fluids, pressure, heat, and deep-time violence that built Earth’s environments and created the conditions life has been dealing with ever since.

This division investigates carbonates, organic-rich mudrocks, migrating fluids, ancient basins, and natural resources, treating the geologic record less like a quiet history book and more like the aftermath of billions of years of tectonic collisions, buried oceans, toxic fluids, environmental collapse, mineral transformation, and planetary-scale chaos.

CONAN integrates petrography, mineralogy, isotope geochemistry, organic geochemistry, fluid analysis, and geochronology to reconstruct ancient environments, track fluids moving through the subsurface, investigate resource systems, and understand how geology controls the chemistry and environmental conditions surrounding modern biological systems.

Before there were microbiomes making weird chemistry or ecosystems trying to recover from disturbance, there was geology. CONAN investigates the ancient Earth systems that built the environments our microbes now inhabit and the chemical battlefields they are still adapting to today.

CONAN Research Projects

The CONAN Division investigates the history of sedimentary basins, subsurface fluids, mineralizing systems, and energy-related geologic processes. Our work combines field geology, petrography, geochemistry, organic geochemistry, isotope systems, and laser-ablation mass spectrometry to understand how rocks record the movement of fluids, the concentration of metals, the generation and migration of hydrocarbons, and the timing of geologic events. Much of our research focuses on the “edge of the civilized subsurface”: complex, underexplored geologic systems where diagenesis, fluid flow, mineralization, and energy resources intersect.

Sedimentary Geochronology and Absolute Numerical Dating

A major focus of the CONAN lab is using U-Pb dating of calcite and related isotope systems to determine when fluids invaded rocks, minerals formed, basins evolved, and tectonic forces started throwing the geological equivalent of furniture across the room. Rather than simply generating dates, we combine geochronology with petrography, trace element chemistry, isotope geochemistry, and basin history to figure out what was actually happening when those events occurred and how they fit into the larger story of subsurface evolution.

Fluid Networks, Diagenesis, and Mineralization

If geochronology tells us when something happened, fluid flow tells us who did it. This project investigates the movement of fluids through sedimentary basins and the geological fingerprints they leave behind, from calcite veins and dolomitization to hydrothermal mineral systems and critical mineral enrichment. By combining mineral textures, fluid chemistry, and geochronology, we reconstruct the routes, timing, and consequences of subsurface fluid migration across geologic systems.

Organic-Rich Shales, Critical Minerals, and Basin Evolution

Black shales are deep-time environmental hoarders. They collect organic matter, metals, isotopes, chemical signatures, and evidence of whatever the ocean was doing at the time, then hang onto it for hundreds of millions of years. This project investigates organic-rich mudrocks to reconstruct ancient environments, changing ocean chemistry, basin evolution, and the processes responsible for concentrating critical elements into economically important systems.

Petroleum Systems, Gas Migration, and Legacy Infrastructure

Abandoned wells are often treated like finished stories. The subsurface disagrees. This project investigates petroleum systems, gas migration, methane emissions, and legacy energy infrastructure to understand how hydrocarbons move through rocks, where gases escape, and why some wells continue emitting decades after abandonment. Current work focuses on field-based measurements of methane emissions from orphaned wells and the geological processes controlling where those emissions occur and how they change through time.

Initiate Communications

Want to collaborate on geologic systems, critical minerals, environmental reconstruction, carbonate systems, or buried worlds with complicated histories? Reach out to the CONAN Division. We are always interested in new field opportunities, new partnerships, and rocks with enough unresolved issues to require isotopes.

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complex host and abiotic systems

@washburnchaoslab

Feral scientists exploring hostile systems, unstable environments, and the chemistry shaping what survives there.