Welcome

About Us

The Tectonics Special Research Centre was established in 1997, with the mission of discovering the supercontinents of which Australia has been part in the past 3,000 million years.

The Centre is based at 
 The University of Western Australia

With nodes at -

 Curtin University

 University of Texas

 Harvard

 Yale

The nature of the Centre’s mission requires great breadth of geological and geophysical knowledge, which will be acquired through primary investigation, and by collaboration and synthesis of existing and new knowledge gathered by others. International collaboration is a key part of the Centre's work plan.

Objectives

The Centre has five objectives, with sets of well-defined goals for each triennium of the Centre's life, which will lead by the end of 2005 to a set of computer-generated global palaeotectonic maps from which the geological evolution of Australia can be understood.

In the process the Centre will address many of the key issues about how the earth works, and whether the hypothesis that all the continental masses on earth periodically assemble in one supercontient before dispersing is sustained. Along the way, new supercontinents will be discovered.

http://sciencewa.net.au

Right: "Out in the field" 
Western Australia
© D.Evans & K. Sircombe