Ewch i’r prif gynnwys
Iain McDonald

Yr Athro Iain McDonald

Athro

Ysgol Gwyddorau'r Ddaear a'r Amgylchedd

Comment
Sylwebydd y cyfryngau

Trosolwyg

Interests

  • Analytical Geochemistry
  • PGE geochemistry
  • Mineral deposits
  • Impact Craters

Cyhoeddiad

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2002

2001

1999

Articles

Book sections

Conferences

  • Knight, R. D., Prichard, H. M., McDonald, I. and Wang, C. Y. 2013. Variation in PGM within two orebodies in the Jinchuan intrusion, Gansu province, NW China. Presented at: 12th Biennial SGA Meeting, Uppsala, Sweden, 12-15 August 2013 Presented at Jonsson, E. ed.Mineral Deposit Research for a High-Tech World Proceedings of the 12th Biennial SGA Meeting, 12–15 August 2013, Uppsala, Sweden, Vol. 1-4. pp. 1032-1035.
  • Prichard, H. M., McDonald, I., Williams, C. T. and Wall, F. (. 1999. Ore-forming processes associated with mafic and ultramafic rocks. Presented at: 5th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits (SGA) and the 10th Quadrennial Symposium of the International Association on the Genesis of Ore Deposits (IAGOD), London, UK, 22-25 August 1999 Presented at Stanley, C. J. et al. eds.Mineral deposits: processes to processing, Proceedings of the 5th biennial SGA meeting, London, England, 22-25 August 1999. Rotterdam: Balkema pp. 697-798.

Ymchwil

A native of Glasgow, Iain McDonald took his undergraduate degree at the University of Glasgow. In addition to the obvious subject specific skills, the BSc Chemistry & Geology course in the late 1980's provided invaluable "hands-on" training in the kinds of applied analytical chemistry, instrument development and inspired bodging that has long since disappeared from most undergraduate courses. In 1990, Iain moved to South Africa to begin a PhD on PGE geochemistry with Maarten de Wit at the University of Cape Town. Unfortunately the laboratory where most of the work was to be carried out was 700 miles away in Johannesburg so Iain moved north to the City of Gold. He found a lab and a long term home among the various geologists, nuclear and solid state physicists, chemists and engineers in the Schonland Research Centre for Nuclear Sciences (now iThemba Labs) at the University of the Witwatersrand. Over the course of his PhD, Iain developed improved fire-assay methods for PGE analysis, was involved in the characterisation of a new low-level PGE standard reference material and showed in a series of experiments that the presence of carbon, and particularly carbon monoxide, in melts could lead to volatilisation of all the PGE

Dr Iain McDonald
Spherules of impact melt from
the late Archaean Jeerinah impact
layer, Hamersley Basin, Western
Australia (courtesy, B. Simonson) 

In 1993, Iain returned to the UK to a postdoc at Manchester University working with David Vaughan and Grenville Turner. The project formed part of a larger EU funded project to evaluate new types of Pt and Pd mineralisation in Madagascar and Albania. After three years in Manchester, Iain took up a lectureship in Geochemistry at the University of Greenwich in 1996. Over the next five years he set up a laboratory for routine PGE analysis and began a sustained programme of research into PGE geochemistry at impact craters collaborating with colleagues in Austria, Denmark, South Africa and America. These studies involved searching for extraterrestrial PGE in impact melt sheets and breccias at Morokweng (South Africa), Ries (Germany), Chesapeake Bay (America) and Zhamanshin (Russia) and for traces of the Late Heavy Bombardment recorded in metasediments at Isua in Greenland.

Since moving to Cardiff in 2001, Iain played a major role in the design and commissioning of the Elemental Analysis Laboratory in 2002 and manages the facility with support from Maira Hernandez Guzmann. During 2002, Iain built up another PGE lab in Cardiff - the only one in the UK to focus on impact crater research - and expanded his research to cover meteorites as well as craters. The highlight of this research has been the discovery of a boulder sized fragment of the asteroid that formed the 144 million year old Morokweng impact crater in South Africa. The results of this work (Maier et al. 2006) were published in Nature in May 2006 and represent the first discovery of fossil meteorites at a large impact crater.

Dr Iain McDonald
Exploration drilling of the Platreef
on the farm Zwartfontein
(courtesy, D. Holwell) 

The other major area of research that Iain has led since moving to Cardiff is a re-evaluation of the PGE mineralization in the northern limb of the Bushveld Complex in South Africa. This limb hosts the enigmatic Platreef Ni-Cu-PGE deposit and its relationships with the rest of the Bushveld Complex are not clear. In conjunction with PhD students David Holwell and Paul Armitage, this research has revolutionised ideas about the Platreef, its relationship with the Merensky Reef, and the manner in which magmas were intruded into the northern limb. This has led to completely new genetic models for this style of deposit (McDonald et al. 2005, Holwell et al. 2005; Holwell and McDonald 2007).

Current Research Interests

  • Development of ICP-MS and LA-ICP-MS techniques
  • PGE mineralization in the northern limb of the Bushveld Complex, South Africa
  • PGE in mantle xenoliths and kimberlites
  • PGE in meteorites, impact melts and impact ejecta deposits

Recent Grants

  • 2002-2004: 24 month Leverhulme Trust Grant award (Grant F/00 407/K) on impact signatures at the J/K boundary. £57,300.
  • 2003-2006: NERC Industrial CASE studentship award NER/S/C/2003/11952 in conjunction with Anglo American plc for support of PhD student David Holwell.
  • 2004-2005: NERC Isotope Geoscience Facilities Steering Committee award (IP/839/11-04) to support in-situ sulphur isotope work by at the SUERC. £17,600 in kind award.
  • 2006-2008: NERC Isotope Geoscience Facilities Steering Committee award (IP/909/0506) to support in-situ sulphur isotope work by at the SUERC. £20,650 in kind award.

Bywgraffiad

Portfolio

  • Research Support
  • Elemental Analysis Facility Manager

Academia

  • BSc Chemistry & Geology (Glasgow) 1989
  • PhD (Cape Town) "Analysis of PGE and transport of PGE in a carbonaceous volatile phase" 1993

Affiliations

  • The Geochemical Society
  • The Meteoritical Society
  • Chairman - Mineral Deposits Studies Group

Conference Organisation and Editorial Roles

Since 2001, Iain has organised or co-organised two conferences. First, an International Workshop on "21st Century Pt-Pd Deposits" at Southampton University in conjunction with H.M. Prichard and A.G. Gunn. A fully peer-reviewed and edited volume of papers from this appeared in volume 111 (1) of Applied Earth Science (Trans Inst. Min. Metall. Section B) in 2002.

The second was the 3 day Geological Society Fermor Flagship Meeting on "World Class Mineral Deposits & Earth Evolution" at Cardiff University in 2003. Peer-reviewed papers from this were published in a special volume of Mineralium Deposita (volume 40 (6) edited by Adrian Boyce and Iain McDonald) and in a special publication of the Geological Society (Number 248, Mineral Deposits and Earth Evolution; edited by McDonald, Boyce, Butler, Herrington and Polya) in 2005.

Also in 2005, Iain co-edited volume 114 (4) of Applied Earth Science (Trans Inst. Min. Metall. Section B), a special issue on minerlization in the northern limb of the Bushveld Complex, with Judith Kinnaird from the University of the Witwatersrand. Since the end of 2005, he has become Executive Editor of the journal, working with a new panel of Associate Editors.