The Pheasant Memorial Laboratory (PML) possesses 5 faculty members working in the fields of Chemical Geodynamics and the Analysis of the Earth's History. The PML originally founded in 1987 by E. Nakamura. The name of the Pheasant Memorial Laboratory is a nickname of the geochemistry group at Misasa working mainly on trace elements and radiogenic isotopes and commemorates an accident that killed a wild male pheasant that hit the glass window of the second generation of our clean laboratory in February 1992.
Our purpose is to apply new and existing geochemical tracers in studies of the terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials aimed of understanding the origin, evolution and dynamics of the Earth and the solar system. This research involves the development of many new techniques for quantitative analysis of the abundance and isotopic composition of ultra-trace elements, affording textural analysis at high spatial resolution. Such new data will provide invaluable information that will improve our understanding of the origin and evolution of terrestrial bodies, such as the Earth, Moon, Mars, and Asteroids.
Employing the comprehensive analytical system for terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials (see CASTEM in detail) described in the accompanying figures, we have been working on many geochemical and cosmochemical problems concerning mantle/crust recycling through subduction zones, mantle processes such as melt extraction, metasomatism, and compositional layering, the evolution of mantle plumes and crustal materials, the evolution of meteorites, and determinations in high P-T experiments of such parameters as trace element partitioning between melts and solids and trace element diffusion in melts. We are expanding our interests in general material sciences, especially "biomaterial science" field.