Peter Cawood is a geologist who has made major contributions to understanding the evolution of the continental crust over our planet鈥檚 4.5 billion-year history. His work integrates direct field observations with leading laboratory techniques. Cawood鈥檚 major contributions include, establishing that continental fragments periodically amalgamate into supercontinents and that this amalgamation has occurred through much of Earth鈥檚 history. Further, he has shown that continental amalgamation and dispersal drive feedbacks with the atmosphere, oceans and mantle, resulting in preferential biasing of the rock record, and that application of microanalytical methods to sedimentary rocks provides a key to understanding crustal composition, and to seeing through the preservation bias.
