People | John F. Wehmiller

John F. Wehmiller
Professor
Geological Sciences
University of Delaware
College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
003 Penny Hall
 007 Penny Hall
 Phone: 1-302-831-2926

jwehm@udel.edu
Personal Home Page

 

Education

  • B.A., Chemistry, Swarthmore College, 1966.
  • Ph.D., Geology/Geochemistry, Columbia University, 1971.

Current Projects

 

 

Quaternary stratigraphy and geochronology of the North Carolina Coastal Plain (with USGS, NCGS, and ECU)
 
Age mixing of fossils in coastal sediments
 
Geochronology of inner shelf strata, New Jersey (with New Jersey Geological Survey)
 
Geochronology of Quaternary coastal units, peninsular Florida (with USF)
 
Compilation of major database of Quaternary fossil localities, Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf Coasts of US - involves USGS, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, and Florida Museum of Natural History
 
Kinetics and diagenesis of amino acids in carbonate fossils
 
Collaboration with colleagues in Turkey, Chile, and California in Quaternary geochronology of coastal marine deposits in tectonically active areas.
 
Management of an international interlaboratory calibration study of amino acid enantiomeric ratios in fossil specimens

Teaching

Courses most frequently taught in last ten years:

Geology 113  Earth Science (non-majors)

Geology 111  Geology of Delaware and its neighbors (non-majors)

Geology 112  Earth Resources and Public Policy  (non-majors)

Geology 303 (team taught) - Earth Surface Processes

Geology 414/614    Quaternary Geology and Geochronology

Geology 446/646  General Geochemistry

800-level topics course in geochemistry (Quaternary geochronologic methods)

Selected Publications

Wehmiller, J. F., York, L. L., and Bart, M. L. (1995). Amino acid racemization geochronology of reworked Quaternary mollusks on US Atlantic coast beaches: implications for chronostratigraphy, taphonomy, and coastal sediment transport.   Marine Geology, v. 124, 303-337.
 
Mirecki, J. E., Wehmiller, J. F., and Skinner, A. 1995. Geochronology of Quaternary Coastal Plain deposits, southeastern Virgina, USA.   Jour. Coastal Research, v. 11(4), 1135-1144.   
 
Wehmiller, J. F. and Miller, G. H. (2000). Aminostratigraphic dating methods in Quaternary geology, in: Noller, J. S., Sowers, J. M., and Letis, W. R., eds., Quaternary Geochronology, Methods and Applications, American Geophysical Union Reference Shelf, v. 4, p. 187-222.
 
Muhs, D. R., Wehmiller, J. F., Simmons, K. R., and York, L. L. (2004) Quaternary sea level history of the United States, IN: A. R. Gillespie, S. C. Porter, and B. F. Atwater, eds. The Quaternary Period in the United States, pp. 147-183. Developments in Quaternary Science. Elsevier, Amsterdam.
 
Smerdon J. E., H. N. Pollack, V. Cermak, J. W. Enz, M. Kresl, J. Safanda, J. F. Wehmiller (2004), Air-ground temperature coupling and subsurface propagation of annual temperature signals, J. Geophys. Res., 109, D21107, doi:10.1029/2004JD005056.
 
Mallinson, D., Riggs, S., Thieler, E. R., Culver, S., Farrell, K., Foster, D., Corbett, R., Horton, B.and Wehmiller, J. (2005) Late Neogene and Quaternary evolution of the northern Albemarle Embayment (mid-Atlantic continental margin, USA) Marine Geology 217 97-117
 
Barbour-Wood, S., Krause, R., Kowalewski, M., Wehmiller, J., and Simoes, M. (2006). Aspartic acid racemization dating of Holocene brachiopods and bivalves from the southern Brazilian shelf, South Atlantic. Quaternary Research 66, 323-331.
 
O’Donnell, T. H., Macko, S. A., and Wehmiller, J. F. (2007) Stable carbon isotope composition of amino acids in modern and fossil Mercenaria. Organic Geochemistry 38, 485-498..
  
Parham, P., S. R. Riggs, S, J. Culver, D. J. Mallinson, and J. F. Wehmiller (2007) Quaternary depositional patters and sea level fluctuations, northeastern North Carolina. Quaternary Research 67, 83-99.
   
Stephen J. Culver, Kathleen M. Farrell, David J. Mallinson, Benjamin P. Horton, Debra A. Willard, E. Robert Thieler, Stanley R. Riggs, Scott W. Snyder, John F. Wehmiller, Christopher E. Bernhardt, Caroline Hillier (2008).Micropaleontologic record of late Pliocene and Quaternary paleoenvironments in thenorthern Albemarle Embayment, North Carolina, U.S.A.Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 264 (2008) 54–77
    
David J. Mallinson, Stephen J. Culver, Stanley R. Riggs, E. Robert Thieler, David Foster,John Wehmiller, Kathleen M. Farrell, Jessica Pierson (2010). Regional seismic stratigraphy and controls on the Quaternary evolution of the Cape Hatteras region of the Atlantic passive margin, USA. Marine Geology 268, 16–33.
    
Wehmiller, J.F., et al., Aminostratigraphy of surface and subsurface Quaternary sediments, North Carolina coastal plain, USA, Quaternary Geochronology (2009), doi:10.1016/j.quageo.2009.10.005. Available online, November 2009.

Former Students

Valerie Bakeman  MS     Laboratory simulation of diagenetic racemization in mollusks

Amy Edwards  MS  Age mixing and racemization calibration in Mulinia from Chesapeake Bay Holocene sediments

Vince Pellerito  MS  Development of a database for Quaternary fossil localities, US Atlantic coastal plain

Tom O'Donnell (UVa PhD)  Isotope geochemistry of fossil proteins

Peter Parham  (ECU MS)  Stratigraphy and geochronology of northeastern NC Quaternary units

M. Scott Harris  PhD  South Carolina stratigraphy and geochronology

Katherine Davis  PhD  Carbonate diagenesis in Quaternary fossils

 Susan Barbour-Wood and Richard Krause (both at VaTech) - Age mixing in Holocene sub-fossils, coastal South America 

 

 

 

 



  • College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment  •   111 Robinson Hall  •   Newark, DE 19716  •   USA
    Phone: 302-831-2841  •   E-mail: ceoe-info@udel.edu