Dr. Neil D. Macrae
Economic Petrology
Professor Emeritus
Office: Off Campus
Phone: 1-519-661-3178
Fax: 1-519-661-3198
Email: nmacrae@uwo.ca
Research Interests
I have just completed several years of work with
A.E.Armitage (successful PhD student), A.L.Jones and S.Habib (both
successful MSc students) studying the petrology and geochemistry of
various metamorphic and igneous terraines of the Churchill Province,
Northwest Territories. In particular, I've been fascinated with the
rich occurrence of micro-diamonds in ultrapotassic lamprophyre dikes in
the Gibson Lake area, first discovered by A.E.Armitage. A number of
papers are still in the pre-publication stages. Dr. A.R.Miller (then of
the GSC) and members of Comaplex Minerals have been active
participants in those ventures.
I've had a long-term interest in the distribution of the REEs,
and thus spent many years (even prior to the NWT excursions) developing
the SIMS techniques required for in-situ REE analysis of minerals in
polished thin section form. That continues ... but access to a NEW SIMS
would be wonderful! Most recently, Dr. Reid Keays has interested me in
the problems concerning genesis of the Sudbury ores. In that regard,
he (as major supervisor) and I (as secondry supervisor) have been
working with Scott Jobin-Bevans (PhD student at UWO/Laurentian) in a
very, very detailed examination of Nipissing diabase. Good things are
ahead! I've just begun a project with a new MSc candidate (Greg
Shellnutt; BSc from St. Mary's) to sort out the chemistry, petrography
and exact age of the olivine diabase dikes of the Sudbury area - which
so many workers keep mistaking for the Nipissing diabase.
Selected Publications
Mata, J., Kerrich, R.,
MacRae, N.D. and Wu, T.W., 1998. Elemental and isotopic (Sr, Nd, and
Pb) characteristics of Madeira Island basalts; evidence for a composite
HIMU-EM I plume fertilizing lithosphere. Canadian Journal of Earth
Sciences, 35: 980-997.
MacRae, N.D., 1995. Secondary-ion mass spectrometry and geology. The Canadian Mineralogist, 33: 219-236.
MacRae,
N.D., Armitage, A.E., Jones, A.L. and Miller, A.R., 1995. A
diamondiferous lamprophyre dike, Gibson Lake area, Northwest
Territories. International Geology Review, 37: 212-229.
Dorais,
M.J. and MacRae, N.D., 1994. Amphibole zoning in the Garland Peak
Syenite, Red Hill Complex, New Hampshire; camptonitic parental magmas
and differentiation to silica-oversaturated syenites. Contributions to
Mineralogy and Petrology, 117: 76-86.
MacRae,
N.D., Bottazzi, P., Ottolini, L. and Vannucci, R., 1993. Quantitative
REE analysis of silicates by SIMS; conventional energy filtering vs.
specimen isolation mode. Chemical Geology, 103: 45-54.
