Romain VaucherUniversity of Lausanne | UNIL · Institute of Earth Sciences (ISTE)
Romain Vaucher
PhD
About
48
Publications
21,274
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311
Citations
Introduction
Sedimentologist specialized in shallow-marine clastic environments working on both modern and ancient sedimentary systems. Research interests in sedimentology include, but not limited to, paleoenvironments, processes, paleontology, and paleoclimate! More information here:
https://sites.google.com/view/romainvaucher/
https://www.prisms-climate.com/
Additional affiliations
September 2021 - present
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- Postdoc.Mobility return grant Fellowship funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
May 2019 - April 2021
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
May 2019 - June 2019
Education
October 2013 - March 2017
September 2010 - June 2012
September 2007 - June 2010
Publications
Publications (48)
Hybrid depositional systems are created by the interaction of two or more hydrodynamic processes that control facies distribution and their characteristics in terms of sedimentary structures and depositional geometry. The interaction of wave and tide both in the geological sedimentary record and modern environments has been rarely described in the...
The Cap Ferret sand spit is situated along the wave-dominated, tidally modulated Atlantic coast of western France, characterized by a semidiurnal macrotidal range. It displays peculiar dome-like bedforms that can be observed at low tide across the intertidal zone. These bedforms exhibit a wavelength of ca. 1.2 m and an elevation of ca. 30 cm. They...
The western Gondwana margin underwent a complex geodynamic history during the early Paleozoic, and major uncertainties remain as to the role of tectonism in sedimentary dynamics. This study focuses on the lower part Santa Rosita Formation and the coeval Guayoc Chico Group (Cordillera Oriental; Northwest Argentina), ranging from the late Cambrian (F...
Bedforms are the expression of fluid flow acting on sediments. They are defined by their wavelength, height and three-dimensional morphology, and these parameters vary as a function of flow properties, and both sediment grain size and sorting. Bedforms are the fundamental elements of sedimentary systems, and this article focuses on those encountere...
Global marine archives from the early Pleistocene indicate that glacial-interglacial cycles, and their corresponding sea-level cycles, have predominantly a periodicity of ~ 41 kyrs driven by Earth's obliquity. Here, we present a clastic shallow-marine record from the early Pleistocene in Southeast Asia (Cholan Formation, Taiwan). The studied strata...
Sedimentologika is a community-driven Diamond Open Access (DOA) scientific journal about sedimentology. The journal aims to create a place where people can publish their research and access scientific studies on all types of sedimentary processes, methods, deposits, and environments, across all spatial and temporal scales, on Earth or any other pla...
The Chengjiang Biota is the earliest Phanerozoic soft-bodied fossil assemblage offering the most complete snapshot of Earth's initial diversification, the Cambrian Explosion. Although palaeobiologic aspects of this biota are well understood, the precise sedimentary environment inhabited by this biota remains debated. Herein, we examine a non-weathe...
The late early Permian coincided with a short-lived cold episode in Western Australia, which occurred long after the demise of late Paleozoic ice sheets, and is manifested by conspicuous dropstones in corresponding marine strata. In the northern Perth Basin, this time interval is represented by the Carynginia Formation, which has long been regarded...
The Fezouata Biota (Morocco) is an exceptionally well-preserved fossil community of Early Ordovician age and although its oldest units are comparable with Burgess Shale-type localities of the Cambrian Explosion, little attention has been paid to the younger units despite potential to reveal the conditions of the Ordovician Radiation. Herein, we des...
The Pleistocene was a phase of global cooling of the Earth through which glacial-interglacial cycles occurred, and the growth and decay of the ice-sheets resulted in quasi-cyclic sea-level fluctuations driven by orbital forcing. Despite that summer insolation is mostly controlled by precession, the records of the glacial cycles showcase a significa...
Tectonic activity in extensional basins has a profound control on accommodation and sediment supply through the interplay between footwall uplift and hanging-wall subsidence, and thus largely influences the three-dimensional architecture of syn-rift sequences. This is emphasized in areas close to major rift-border faults, where steep coastal relief...
Coastal depositional systems are normally classified based on the relative input of wave, tide, and river processes. While wave-through to river-dominated environments are well characterized , environments along the wave-to-tide continuum are relatively poorly understood and this limits the reliability and utility of coastal classification schemes....
The Clearwater and Grand Rapids formations and their equivalent allomembers comprise the uppermost strata of the Lower Cretaceous Mannville Group in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. This study integrates drill-core and geophysical well-log datasets across east-central Alberta and west-central Saskatchewan in an attempt to decipher the large-...
Throughout their long history, trilobites occupied various ecological niches, colonizing a wide variety of marine environments. However, the paleoecology of this group is mostly based on shelf-slope environments and less is known about their distribution in marginal environments. To understand how trilobite communities respond to a deltaic influenc...
The Fezouata Biota in Morocco is the only Lower Ordovician Lagerstätte yielding a biologically diverse assemblage in a fully marine environment, whilst also containing organisms typical of Cambrian Burgess Shale-type (BST) ecosystems. Fossils from the Fezouata Shale share the same mode of preservation as Cambrian BST biotas defined by carbonaceous...
Shallow marine sediment typically contains a mix of marine- and terrestrial-organic material (OM). Most terrestrial OM enters the ocean through rivers, and marine OM is incorporated into the sediment through both suspension settling of marine plankton and sediment reworking by tides and waves under fairweather conditions. River-derived terrestrial...
The characteristics of tropical cyclone (TC) deposits are highly variable, and in the shallow waters of straits their character has not been established. Multiple coarse-grained beds in lower Pliocene strata in the Western Foreland Basin of Taiwan are interpreted as TC deposits, and the sedimentology of these beds reflects evolving TC processes and...
This study focuses on upper Cambrian – Lower Ordovician strata containing the lowermost fossil-bearing levels of the basin (Santa Rosita Formation and Guayoc Chico Group). Bounded by two major regional unconformities, this stratigraphic interval was previously considered as a retro-arc foreland basin displaying evidence of westward progradation wit...
The Furongian–Floian interval represents a key evolutionary transition with the onset of the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), soon after the Cambrian Explosion. Few Furongian echinoderm faunas are known worldwide, and all of them consist of low diversity assemblages comprising edrioasteroids, eocrinoids, rhombiferans, solutans, and...
Tidally modulated shoreface (TMS) corresponds to peculiar costal environments. The general morphology and the expressed bedforms are provided by the interplay of both waves and tides. The recognition of TMS in the fossil record still remains a difficult task. The study of one mega-tidal modern TMS in the north of France (Berck-Plage) provides new k...
The genus Rhopalocystis (Eocrinoidea, Blastozoa) is characterized by both a short stratigraphic range (Fezouata Shale, middle Tremadocian to middle Floian, Lower Ordovician) and a reduced geographic extension (Agdz-Zagora area, central Anti-Atlas, Morocco). Since the original description of its type species (R. destombesi Ubaghs, 1963), three succe...
Recognition of hybrid sedimentary systems (wave-tide) in the sedimentary record is
not trivial when one of the processes (here, the tide) does not leave direct sedimentary traces
allowing its identification. The Lower Ordovician sedimentary succession (Fezouata and Zini
formations) of the Zagora region (Anti-Atlas, Morocco) records a dominance of w...
Hummocky-cross stratifications (HCS) are sedimentary structures supposed to be diagnostic of storm event when recognized in the fossil record. Since HCS are prone to be generated from the nearshore to the storm wave base, and generally preserved between the fair-weather wave base and the storm wave base, these sedimentary structures are powerful to...
The Fezouata Shale (Early Ordovician, Morocco) is renowned in the palaeontological community for its Konservat-Lagerstätte (Tremadocian in age) that yielded thousands of exceptionally well-preserved fossils (EPF) from the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event. Lower Ordovician deposits in the central Anti-Atlas Mountain (Zagora area) are expres...
The present study documents new palynological investigations of the Fezouata Shale from the Anti-Atlas (Morocco). Palynomorphs were extracted from samples collected from both outcrops and drill cuttings. Outcrop samples were taken near Zagora, and include some that were collected during excavation of stratigraphic horizons where exceptionally well-...
The Lower Ordovician Fezouata Konservat-Lagerstätte from southern Morocco has been one of the major palaeontological discoveries of the last decade. It provides a unique insight into one of the most critical periods in the evolution of marine life: the Cambrian-Ordovician transition. However, its potential for deciphering key trends in animal diver...
The Lower Ordovician succession (ca 1000 m of thickness) in the central Anti-Atlas of Morocco is represented by the Fezouata and Zini formations. It consists of fossiliferous siltstones exhibiting many layers containing exceptionally preserved soft tissues of animals, thus recording the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event. In order to constra...
This paper describes the taphonomy of new echinoderm assemblages composed of different species of an eocrinoid genus (Rhopalocystis), observed in the Lower Ordovician (Tremadocian) of the Zagora area (Central Anti-Atlas, Morocco).
The Lower Fezouata Formation (Lower Ordovician, Morocco) has yielded a remarkably diverse exceptionally-preserved biota, which provides unique insights into the transition between the Cambrian and Palaeozoic Evolutionary Faunas. Until recently, fossils from these deposits were collected from small isolated excavations, the stratigraphic positions o...
In the central Anti-Atlas (Zagora, Morocco), the Lower Ordovician (Tremadocian to Floian) consists in ca. 1000m of fossiliferous siltstones and sandstones. It is represented by the Fezouata and Zini formations. One of the most important radiation of the Phanerozoic, the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), is recorded in the Lower Fezo...
L'Ordovicien inférieur de la région de Zagora est renommé internationalement pour ses faunes à préservation exceptionnelle (Fezouata Biota) qui documentent la transition jusqu'alors peu connue entre "l'explosion cambrienne" et "la grande biodiversification ordovicienne". Depuis la découverte des premiers gisements au début des années 2000, leur exp...
Au cours des années 2000, la découverte de nombreux gisements à préservation exceptionnelle dans la Formation des Fezouata (Ordovicien inférieur), dans la région de Zagora (Anti-Atlas central, Maroc), a permisde documenter, pour la première fois, des assemblages marins particulièrement riches et diversifiés, dont la préservation est comparable à ce...
In the central Anti-Atlas (Zagora, Morocco), the Lower Ordovician (Tremadocian to Floian) consists in ca. 1000m of fossiliferous siltstones and sandstones. It is represented by the Fezouata and Zini formations. One of the most important radiation of the Phanerozoic, the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), is recorded in the Lower Fezo...
We analysed the impact of intensive Holothuria scabra farming by comparing various parameters of the sea
cucumber food (i.e. the upper layer of the sediment) inside and outside the pens of two farms in the south-west of
Madagascar. Our analyses showed that : (i) the proportion of the finest grain size fraction (< 250 μm) decreased from 5 to 14%, (i...
Carbonate grains are more prone to be altered (micrite envelopes, grain breaking, dissolution) by the activity of deposit-feeders than detrital minerals such as quartz. Holothurids are deposit-feeders and some species such as H. scabra or H. forskali ingest more than 100g of sediment per day when living on sandy substrates. The aim of our research...
Carbonate grains are more prone to be altered by the activity of deposit-feeders than detrital minerals such as quartz. Holothurids who are deposit-feeders such as H. scabra ingest more than 100g of sediment per day when living on sandy substrates. The aim of our research is to study the impact of holothurids on carbonate and mixed carbonate-silici...
Carbonate grains are more prone to alteration (micrite envelopes, grain breaking, dissolution) by the activity of deposit-‐feeders compared to detrital minerals such as quartz. Holothurids are deposit-‐feeders and some species such as H. scabra or H. forskali ingest more than 100g of sediment per day when living on sandy substrates. The aim of ou...
Carbonate grains are more prone to be altered (micrite envelopes, grain breaking, dissolution) by the activity of deposit-feeders than detrital minerals such as quartz. Holothurids are deposit-feeders and some species such as H. scabra or H. forskali ingest more than 100g of sediment per day when living on sandy substrates. The aim of our research...
Projects
Projects (7)
Guest editors: Valentin Zuchuat, Romain Vaucher, Marcello Gugliotta, Helena van der Vegt, Daniel S. Collins, and Miquel Poyatos-Moré
Coastal to shelfal areas show a large variety of depositional settings that are commonly characterized by the interplay of various processes (e.g. riverine, tidal, waves, wind). These hydrodynamic processes in turn interact with sediment mixtures resulting in complex morphodynamics and a variety of sedimentary facies stratigraphic architectures. The depositional record of these process interactions are not straightforward to decipher and is further complicated by changes in depositional systems through geological time: variations in relative sea level, climate, and sediment supply, among other factors. A better understanding of these interactions is crucial for an advance in Sedimentology and it has been the focus of numerous recent and ongoing research.
From the outcome of our sessions at vEGU2021 and at the virtual IAS International Meeting of Sedimentology 2021, and given the recent advances on the topic, we believe that the community would benefit from a special issue on mixed depositional processes in coastal to shelf environments, and their impact on the distribution, internal architecture, and preservation of sedimentary facies. Further, coastal and shallow-marine areas around the world are subject to intense and ever-increasing anthropogenic stresses, including those associated with climate and sea-level variations. This special issue will provide insights into the natural evolution of these systems, benefit their sustainable protection and development by local communities and policy makers.
Who can submit: People working in coastal (including adjacent continental) to shelfal environments, in which different depositional processes are impacting sedimentation and the architecture of sedimentary bodies. We invite everyone who works either in the rock record or in modern settings, with data acquired (but not limited to) from fieldwork, remote-sensing, experimental lab work, and numerical modelling.
We hope to invite the first authors (or the main authors) of the different manuscripts submitted to this special issue to collaborate on a state-of-the-art paper led by us six editors. Please submit your paper at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/dep2.
Timeframe:
Deadline for expression of interest (title, authors list, abstract (can be modified)): 30th September 2021
Deadline for submission of full manuscript: 31st January 2022
For more information contact the guest editors of this special issue: Valentin Zuchuat (valentin.zuchuat.geology@gmail.com), Romain Vaucher (romain.vaucher88@gmail.com), Marcello Gugliotta (mgugliot@uni-bremen.de), Helena van der Vegt (Helena.vanderVegt@deltares.nl), Daniel S. Collins (dscollins.geo@gmail.com), and Miquel Poyatos-Moré (miquel.poyatos@uab.cat).
The research goals of PRISMS are to resolve paleoclimate records in the rock record with a focus on sediment deposited in shallow marine (beach to shelf) environments. Shallow-marine settings are traditionally not considered to preserve pristine records of paleoclimate; however, work in sedimentary basins with very high accommodation/ sedimentation rates such as the Western Foreland Basin, Taiwan show that these settings can preserve high-resolution records of climate change and its impact on sedimentation. Our goal is to study high accommodation basins globally and assess local records of paleoclimate changes preserved therein. The resulting data is intended to inform and revise forward looking climate models by developing more site specific and accurate past climate histories.
Website: https://www.prisms-climate.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PRISMS_Climate
Investigate the structure and functioning of Cambro-Ordovician ecosystems, quantifying the trends in the occupation of the eco-space over time and its relationship with the diversity trajectories of different fossil groups
