ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RICK SQUIRE, a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University, is an internationally-recognized expert on how Earth’s geological evolution influenced the rise of animals and human civilization.

Recently, he led the research team that identified the remains of the largest mountain range in Earth’s history: the Transgondwanan Supermountains. Many of the things you’ve ever seen, from the culture around you to the things you use in your everyday life and from the lowliest insect to all the humans that have ever lived, owe their existence in part to these ancient mountains.

Associate Professor Squire's geological research has been published in peer-reviewed journals throughout the world, including in Geology, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Journal of the Geological Society (London), Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, and the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences. He is currently writing about this stunning Transgondwana find in his book Supermountain, Superlife.

Associate Professor Squire gives engaging, captivating talks on:

- The rise of animals – For the first 4 billion years of Earth’s history, life evolved little beyond algae and bacteria in the oceans, but around 575 million years ago animals suddenly appeared and diversified rapidly. What triggered this radical biological event is one of the most-challenging questions in science today, but Associate Professor Squire's discovered a vital clue to break this mystery wide open. Growth of the Transgondwanan Supermountains caused dramatic changes in global climate and generated a network of huge rivers that flushed enormous volumes of nutrients into the oceans. The ensuing environmental catastrophe caused Earth’s oceans to change colour from purple to the deep-blue we see today as they became oxygenated, and created a huge flux of the elements that form the building-blocks of complex life. Using his broad experience and knowledge, Rick will show what the first animals looked like and provide an overview of the reasons why they appeared and evolved so explosively.

- The rise of civilization – The Transgondwanan Supermountains are not only the key to understanding the flourishing of life on Earth, but also the flourishing of human civilization. Archaeological excavations indicate that about 11,000 years ago, humans made the transition from living as mobile egalitarian foragers to residing in organised and regulated settlements by adopting irrigation-based agriculture around perennial springs in arid areas of the Middle East. The fresh clean drinking water sourced from these springs was from an enormous network of aquifers in thick units of sandstone that underlie much of the Arabian Peninsula and northern Africa. This freshwater aquifer system is the largest in the world, and the sand containing it was eroded from the Transgondwanan Supermountains more than 500 million years ago. These elements of the natural environment that were crucial to the rise of first human civilization also influenced the social, political and religious institutions on which much of our Western culture is based. Therefore, the world’s oldest human civilization and most-influential cultures were spawned around freshwater springs now trapped in the extensive Middle East sandstone that more than 500 million years earlier were associated with the greatest flourishing of life on Earth.

- The bittersweet legacy of Earth’s greatest environmental catastrophe – The sand and rock fragments eroded from the Transgondwanan Supermountains also contain many of the largest oil and gas deposits that we exploit today. For example, the huge oil and gas reserves in the Middle East that sparked several recent wars occur in sand that was eroded from the Transgondwanan Supermountains many of hundreds of years earlier. Thus, the very unsung sandstone that led to the rise of animals and to the rise of Western civilization also played a key role in the rise of the industrial civilization of the oil age. And, as we extract that oil and pump its carbon byproducts into the air, this same sandstone may be at the center of yet another massive global shift: the greatest collective challenge civilization ever faced - global climate change.

Associate Professor Squire is an entertaining and authoritative speaker, and the sense of awe, wonder and intrigue he generates by integrating his fascinating topics of supermountains, animal evolution and the rise of civilization is infectious.

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