Adam C. Maloof

About

Adam C. Maloof is a Professor of Geosciences at Princeton University, where he is a faculty member in the Department of Geosciences. He joined Princeton as an assistant professor of geology in July 2006 and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in January 2012. Maloof is the founder of The Princeton Grinder Lab (GIRI) Group and leads the Maloof Research Group. His research focuses on Earth history, utilizing original field observations at the scale of maps, rock outcrops, and thin sections. His group's current work involves analyzing sedimentary and volcanic rocks to extract information about Earth's ancient magnetic field, the relative motion of continents, perturbations to the global carbon cycle, and the coevolution of life and climate.

Research topics

• Geology
• Oceanography
• Astrobiology
• Physics
• Paleontology
• Engineering
• Biology
• Physical geography
• Astronomy
• Geodesy

Selected publications

• Historical glacier change on Svalbard predicts doubling of mass loss by 2100

  Nature · 2022 · 145 citations

  PublisherDOI

• Long‐Term Earth‐Moon Evolution With High‐Level Orbit and Ocean Tide Models

  Journal of Geophysical Research Planets · 2021 · 58 citations

  , evolution of inclination and eccentricity is dominated by tidal and core-mantle boundary dissipation within the Moon, which yield high lunar orbit inclinations in the early Earth-Moon system. A drawback for our results is that the semi-major axis does not collapse to near-zero values at 4.5 Ga, as indicated by most lunar formation models. Additional processes, missing from our current efforts, are discussed as topics for future investigation.

  DOI

• The origin of carbonate mud and implications for global climate

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022 · 54 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Carbonate mud represents one of the most important geochemical archives for reconstructing ancient climatic, environmental, and evolutionary change from the rock record. Mud also represents a major sink in the global carbon cycle. Yet, there remains no consensus about how and where carbonate mud is formed. Here, we present stable isotope and trace-element data from carbonate constituents in the Bahamas, including ooids, corals, foraminifera, and algae. We use geochemical fingerprinting to demons…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reevaluating the evidence for a Hadean-Eoarchean dynamo

  Science Advances · 2020 · 33 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  The time of origin of the geodynamo has important implications for the thermal evolution of the planetary interior and the habitability of early Earth. It has been proposed that detrital zircon grains from Jack Hills, Western Australia, provide evidence for an active geodynamo as early as 4.2 billion years (Ga) ago. However, our combined paleomagnetic, geochemical, and mineralogical studies on Jack Hills zircons indicate that most have poor magnetic recording properties and secondary magnetizati…

  DOI

• Branching archaeocyaths as ecosystem engineers during the Cambrian radiation

  Geobiology · 2022-08-25 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access

  The rapid origination and diversification of major animal body plans during the early Cambrian coincide with the rise of Earth's first animal-built framework reefs. Given the importance of scleractinian coral reefs as ecological facilitators in modern oceans, we investigate the impact of archaeocyathan (Class Archaeocyatha) reefs as engineered ecosystems during the Cambrian radiation. In this study, we present the first high-resolution, three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions of branching archaeo…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Fluctuating tidewater glaciers, chemical weathering and survival of reef-dwelling organisms: the Marinoan snowball, South Australia

  NSF · $203k · 2009–2013

• Collaborative Research: Quantifying Rates of Neoproterozoic Global Change, Ethiopia

  NSF · $150k · 2014–2017

• Collaborative Research: Toward a global timeline of biological and ocean geochemical change during the early Cambrian

  NSF · $1.1M · 2014–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Emily Geyman

  46 shared

• Nicholas L. Swanson‐Hysell

  University of Minnesota

  37 shared

• B. P. Weiss

  36 shared

• Galen P. Halverson

  McGill University

  29 shared

• Ryan Manzuk

  26 shared

• Blair Schoene

  26 shared

• Paul F. Hoffman

  University of Edinburgh

  24 shared

• Akshay Mehra

  Princeton University

  20 shared

Labs

• The Maloof Research GroupPI

Similar researchers at Princeton University

• Daniel M. Sigmanh-106
• Michael Oppenheimerh-103
• Bess B. Wardh-81