Currently I am getting my masters degree in  geology at the University of Wyoming.   My focus is on metamorphic petrology, but my project  encompasses many disciplines including structural geology, isotope geochemistry, and global  tectonics.  The Archean metamorphic rocks that  I’m studying are located in central Wyoming at  Black Rock Mountain.  This mountain is a part of  the larger Granite Mountains, which stretches for  about 115 km E-W.    The main rock type within these mountains is an  undeformed Neoarchean granite, but older  metamorphic rocks exist as well, such as those in  my field area.  Within Black Rock Mountain, two  different aged basement orthogneisses can be seen, which are 3.6 Ga and 3.3 Ga respectively.   Overlying the granite is a supracrustal sequence  which includes pelitic schists, quartzite, banded  iron formations, and dacite.  Other rock types  within the mountain include sheared and unsheared meta-gabbros, Tertiary mafic dikes, cross-cutting  Proterozoic dikes, pyroxenite, and foliated and  lineated amphibolites. 

It is proposed that two important events have been recorded in Black Rock  Mountain.  First, there was rifting ca. 2.86 Ga associated with the deposition of the supracrustal sequences.  The other event is a collisional event ca. 2.62 Ga, which is associated with the formation of the Granite Mountains Batholith, a portion of the  larger Wyoming Batholith. The primary goal of this research is to use the good  exposures and potentially dateable igneous and metamorphic minerals within the  supracrustal rocks in Black Rock Mountain and surrounding areas to evaluate this hypothesized geologic history and determine precise timing and metamorphic  conditions associated with the rifting and collisional events.  By knowing this, the  events at Black Rock Mountain can be correlated to the tectonic events that shaped the Wyoming Province in the Archean, a time when the majority of continental  crust growth was happening.