Re­search area Tim Eglin­ton's re­search is fo­cussed on un­der­stand­ing of the pro­cesses that gov­ern the Earth's car­bon cycle from the mo­lecu­lar level to the global scale, and on the leg­acy of past bio­lo­gical activ­ity and en­vir­on­mental con­di­tions con­tained in or­ganic sig­na­tures pre­served in the geo­lo­gic re­cord. This is centered on a “source-​to-sink” ap­proach that ex­am­ines the pro­duc­tion, trans­port, trans­form­a­tion and burial of ter­restrial and mar­ine bio­spheric or­ganic ma­ter­i­als at the Earth sur­face over a range of spa­tial and tem­poral scales. Cur­rent em­phasis is placed on bet­ter un­der­stand­ing basin-​scale or­ganic mat­ter dy­nam­ics within ter­restrial and oceanic realms, with a fo­cus on modern-​day car­bon cycle pro­cesses, and on vari­ab­il­ity in the car­bon cycle dur­ing the Late Qua­tern­ary. The de­vel­op­ment and ap­plic­a­tion of new ana­lyt­ical ap­proaches rep­res­ents a key com­pon­ent of Tim Eglin­ton's re­search activ­it­ies, as are field-​based pro­grams both in con­tin­ental and mar­ine set­tings.