Sean P. Gaynor, Ph.D.

I am an economic geologist focused on generating and integrating datasets to better understand geological and societal aspects of mineral resources, ranging from their formation in mineral systems to documenting mining operations, including both active and legacy features.

Through my career, I’ve worked on understanding rates and sources of geologic processes, and largely approach these types of scientific questions using radiogenic isotope geochemistry and geochronology, while integrating other sub-disciplinary approaches such as sedimentology, structural geology or geophysics. My research interests include economic geology, large igneous provinces, batholith formation, supervolcano eruptions, igneous petrology, global climate change in deep time, thermochronology, the geochemical evolution of the lithosphere, extensional tectonics and the development of high-precision geochronology. My research has spanned over several continents and included geologic research ranging from the Archean to the present, and ore and mineral deposits in the Colorado Mineral Belt, the Southern Rocky Mountains, the Arizona-New Mexico porphyry Cu belt, South Africa, Croatia, Serbia, China and Nicaragua.