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Books > Earth & environment > Earth sciences > Geology & the lithosphere > Historical geology
This book tells the story of the catastrophic impact of the giant 10 Km asteroid Chicxulub into the ancient Gulf of Mexico 65.5 million years ago. The book begins with a discussion of the nature of asteroids and the likelihood of future Earth-impacts. The story then turns to the discovery of a global sediment layer attributed to the fallout from the impact and a piecing together of the evidence that revealed a monster crater, buried under the Gulf. Reviewed is the myriad of geological and fossil evidence that suggested the disastrous sequence of events occurring when a "nuclear-like" explosion ripped through the sea, Earth, and atmosphere, thus forming the mega-crater and tsunami. The aftermath of the Chicxulub's event initiated decades and more of major global climate changes including a "Nuclear Winter" of freezing darkness and blistering greenhouse warming. A chapter is dedicated to the science of tsunamis and their model generation, including a portrayal of the globally rampaging Chicxulub waves. The asteroid's global devastation killed off some 70% of animal and plant life including the dinosaurs. The study of an ancient Cambrian fossil bed suggests how "roll of the dice" events can affect the future evolution of life on Earth. We see how Chicxulub's apparent destruction of the dinosaurs, followed by the their replacement with small mammals, altered forever the progress of human evolution. This book presents a fascinating glimpse through the lens of the natural sciences - the geology, climatology, and oceanography, of the effects of an enormous astronomical event.
Longlisted for the Highland Book Prize 2019 The rocks of northern Scotland tell of turbulent events involving continental collisions that unleashed cataclysmic forces, creating a chain of mountains, the remnants of which we see today on both sides of the Atlantic. Geologists from Victorian times onwards have studied the area, and some of the most important geological phenomena have been established and described from the rocks that built these stunning landscapes. In this book, Alan McKirdy makes sense of the many and varied episodes that shaped the familiar landscape we see today. He highlights a number of fascinating geological features, including the Old Red Sandstones of Cromarty and the Black Isle, which carry the secrets of life during 'the Age of Fishes', and the thin sliver of fossil-bearing strata which hugs the coast from Golspie to beyond Helmsdale that dates back to Jurassic times and which records the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Geology as a science has a fascinating and controversial history. Kieran D. O'Hara's book provides a brief and accessible account of the major events in the history of geology over the last two hundred years, from early theories of Earth structure during the Reformation, through major controversies over the age of the Earth during the Industrial Revolution, to the more recent twentieth-century development of plate tectonic theory, and on to current ideas concerning the Anthropocene. Most chapters include a short 'text box' providing more technical and detailed elaborations on selected topics. The book also includes a history of the geology of the Moon, a topic not normally included in books on the history of geology. The book will appeal to students of Earth science, researchers in geology who wish to learn more about the history of their subject, and general readers interested in the history of science.
Resolution of the sixty year debate over continental drift, culminating in the triumph of plate tectonics, changed the very fabric of Earth science. This four-volume treatise on the continental drift controversy is the first complete history of the origin, debate and gradual acceptance of this revolutionary theory. Based on extensive interviews, archival papers and original works, Frankel weaves together the lives and work of the scientists involved, producing an accessible narrative for scientists and non-scientists alike. This first volume covers the period in the early 1900s when Wegener first pointed out that the Earth's major landmasses could be fitted together like a jigsaw and went on to propose that the continents had once been joined together in a single landmass, which he named Pangaea. It describes the reception of Wegener's theory as it splintered into sub-controversies and geoscientists became divided between the 'fixists' and 'mobilists'.
This is the first book to investigate the structure, origin and
evolution of carbonate mud-mounds. Mud-mounds are accumulations of
biogenic carbonate sediment that are common in the geological
record, and economically important as they host lead zinc
mineralization and oil and gas. The book reviews, for the first
time, the different mechanisms of mud-mound formation and examines
in detail the major changes in mud-mound type and occurrence
through geological time. The major part of the book contains case
studies of mud-mounds from the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic.
The coverage is global and truly international, with 32 authors
from 10 countries. If you are a member of the International Association of Sedimentologists, for purchasing details, please see: http: //www.iasnet.org/publications/details.asp?code=SP23
This volume examines prehistoric copper mining in Europe, from the first use of the metal eight thousand years ago in the Balkans to its widespread adoption during the Bronze Age. The history of research is examined, as is the survival of this mining archaeology in different geological settings. There is information on the technological processes of mineral prospecting, ore extraction, and metal production, as well as the logistics and organization of this activity and its environmental impact. The analysis is broadened to consider the economic and societal context of prehistoric copper mining and the nature of the distinctive communities involved. The study is based on a review of field data and research produced over many decades by the collaboration of archaeologists and geologists in a number of different countries, and covers such famous mining centres as the Mitterberg in Austria, Kargaly in Russia, the Great Orme in Wales, and those in Cyprus, from where the name of this metal derives. These regional studies are brought together for the first time to present a remarkable story of human endeavour and innovation, which marks a new stage in the mastery of our natural resources.
The 2010 tsunamis generated in Haiti, Chile, and Indonesia caused various damage on the coasts. In the past, the 1755 Lisbon, 1964 Alaska, and 2003 Algeria earthquakes also generated damaging tsunamis. This volume contains an introduction and 18 papers, mostly presented at the 25th International Tsunami Symposium held 1-4 July 2011. They report the above tsunamis and discuss tsunami DART observations, warning systems, risk management in the Pacific, modelling of earthquake and landslide tsunamis, and probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE PRIZE 2022 'A joyful collision of science, history and nature writing' Helen Gordon, author of Notes from Deep Time Adam Sedgwick was a priest and scholar. Roderick Murchison was a retired soldier. Charles Lapworth was a schoolteacher. It was their personal and intellectual rivalry, pursued on treks through Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, Devon and parts of western Russia, that revealed the narrative structure of the Paleozoic Era, the 300-million-year period during which life on Earth became recognisably itself. Nick Davidson follows in their footsteps and draws on maps, diaries, letters, field notes and contemporary accounts to bring the ideas and characters alive. But this is more than a history of geology. As we travel through some of the most spectacular scenery in Britain, it's a celebration of the sheer visceral pleasure generations of geologists have found, and continue to find, in noticing the earth beneath our feet.
This 2007 book reviews the history of geomorphological studies of the Great Barrier Reef and assesses the influences of sea-level change and oceanographic processes on the development of reefs over the last 10,000 years. It presents analyses of recently attained data from the Great Barrier Reef and reconstructions of the sequence of events which have led to its more recent geomorphology. The authors emphasise the importance of the geomorphological time span and its applications for present management applications. This is a valuable reference for academic researchers in geomorphology and oceanography, and will also appeal to graduate students in related fields.
The diplomat and M. P. William Hamilton (1805 67) was also a keen geologist and a prot g of Sir Roderick Murchison. In 1835 he set off with a companion for the eastern Mediterranean, visiting the Ionian Islands, the Bosphorus and the volcanic area called the Katakekaumene. Hamilton then continued alone on horseback through Armenia and Asia Minor before returning to Smyrna (Izmir). Having already published some of his notes as papers for the Geological Society, he published this two-volume account in 1842. The work was praised by Alexander von Humboldt, and in 1843 it won Hamilton the founder's medal of the Royal Geographical Society (of which he was one of the secretaries from 1832 to 1854). Volume 2 describes Hamilton's journey along the coast of Ionia to archaeological sites including Ephesus and Rhodes, and his expedition inland to explore the Taurus mountains before his final return to Smyrna.
This is a book about an ocean that vanished six million years ago - the ocean of Tethys. Named after a Greek sea nymph, there is a sense of mystery about such a vast, ancient ocean, of which all that remains now are a few little pools, like the Caspian Sea. There were other great oceans in the history of the Earth - Iapetus, Panthalassa - but Tethys was the last of them, vanishing a mere moment (in geological terms) before Man came on the scene. Once Tethys stretched across the world. How do we know? And how could such a vast ocean vanish? The clues of its existence are scattered from Morocco to China. This book tells the story of the ocean, from its origins some 250 million years ago, to its disappearance. It also tells of its impact on life on Earth. The dinosaurs were just beginning to get going when Tethys formed, and they were long dead by the time it disappeared. Dorrik Stow describes the powerful forces that shaped the ocean; the marine life it once held and the rich deposits of oil that life left behind; the impact of its currents on environment and climate. It is rarely realized how very important oceans are to climate and environment, and therefore to life on Earth. The story of Tethys is also a story of extinctions, and floods, and extraordinary episodes such as the virtual drying up of the Mediterranean, before being filled again by a dramatic cascade of water over the straits of Gibralter. And in the telling of that story, we also learn how geologists put together the clues in rocks and fossils to discover Tethys and its history.
The diplomat and M. P. William Hamilton (1805 67) was also a keen geologist and a prot g of Sir Roderick Murchison. In 1835 he set off with a companion for the eastern Mediterranean, visiting the Ionian Islands, the Bosphorus and the volcanic area called the Katakekaumene. Hamilton then continued alone on horseback through Armenia and Asia Minor before returning to Smyrna (Izmir). Having already published some of his notes as papers for the Geological Society, he published this two-volume account in 1842. The work was praised by Alexander von Humboldt, and in 1843 it won Hamilton the founder's medal of the Royal Geographical Society (of which he was one of the secretaries from 1832 to 1854). Volume 1 describes Hamilton's outward journey to Smyrna, and the archaeological sites, geological features, landscapes and people he observed on a long series of excursions across Anatolia, as far as Trebizond and Erzurum.
This short but distinctive paper was published in 1835 by Charles Daubeny (1795 1867), who began his career as a physician but soon found his passion to be volcanos. At this time, Daubeny held chairs in chemistry and botany at Oxford. He had made many field trips to European volcanic regions between 1819 and 1825, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1822, and in 1826 published the first edition of his famous Description of Active and Extinct Volcanos, of which a later version also appears in this series. Here Daubeny describes a winter trip to the Apulia (Puglia) region in the south-east of Italy, rarely described by travel writers of his time, to visit Lake Amsanctus, famously mentioned by Virgil, and the extinct volcano Mount Vultur. Although Daubeny's overall focus is scientific, his account also includes lively descriptions of classical remains and rural society in southern Italy.
G. F. Rodwell (1843-1905) was researching an entry about Mount Etna for the Encyclopaedia Britannica when he realised that no history of this Italian volcano existed in English. He therefore he began the present work, which was published in 1878. Rodwell starts by looking at classical and literary references before giving a detailed physical description of the volcano. One chapter is devoted to explaining how to climb the mountain - something Rodwell was qualified to do, as he had scaled it himself in 1877. He also gives a historical account of the most dramatic aspect of Etna - its many eruptions, which had first been recorded as early as 525 BCE, while the most recent activity had taken place in 1874, only a few years before Rodwell's ascent. With its focus on history and geology, and inclusion of illustrations and maps, Etna gives a detailed portrait of this famous volcano.
In Travels Through Norway and Lapland, Leopold von Buch (1774-1853), a German geologist and palaeontologist, recounts his expedition to Scandinavia in 1806-1808. This book, originally published in Berlin in 1810, and in this English translation in 1813, describes these large, sparsely populated regions at the turn of the nineteenth century. The translator's preface provides an important geo-political backdrop - the possibility of war in Norway and the machinations of Sweden, Russia and Great Britain over the future of this territory. Von Buch's observations, however, are firmly engaged with the scientific. He writes that his motivation for the expedition was to find out how the harsh climate influenced the land, and he records detailed information about the weather and the region's mineralogy and geological structure. He also describes the local population, providing a wide-ranging account of life in the remote reaches of Northern Europe.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published Observations on the Volcanic Islands in 1844. It is one of three major geological works resulting from the voyage of the Beagle, and contains detailed geological descriptions of locations visited by Darwin including the Cape Verde archipelago, Mauritius, Ascension Island, St Helena, the Galapagos, and parts of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Chapter 6 discusses the types of lava found on different oceanic islands. There is an appendix of short contributions by two other scholars: descriptions of fossil shells from Cape Verde, St Helena and Tasmania by G. B. Sowerby and of fossil corals from Tasmania by W. Lonsdale. The book is illustrated with woodcuts, maps and sketches of specimens. It provides valuable insights into one of the most important scientific voyages ever made, and the development of Darwin's ideas on geology.
John Murray (1778 1820) was a public lecturer and writer on chemistry and geology. After attending the University of Edinburgh he became a popular public lecturer on chemistry and pharmacy. He was also a prolific writer of chemistry textbooks which were widely used in British universities. This popular volume, first published anonymously in 1802, contains Murray's critical response to John Playfair's volume Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth, also published in 1802 and re-issued in this series. In this volume Murray clearly describes both the competing Huttonian and Neptunian (also known as Wernerian) theories of rock formation. Using much of the same geological evidence as Playfair, Murray also objectively analyses the theories' claims through rock and fossil formations and concludes in support of the Wernerian theory. This valuable volume explores one of the major geological controversies of the period and illustrates the main contemporary criticisms of Hutton's work.
The papers within these volumes were compiled between late 1978 and early 1980, from data on tillites and tillite-like rocks. The research was conducted for the Pre-Pleistocene Tillite Project of the International Geological Correlation Programme, and was first published in volume form in 1981. In this substantial work, M. J. Hambrey and W. B. Harland have assembled essays by leaders in the field of pre-Pleistocene glacial research. The work's various chapters review in depth the glacial records of Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australasia, Europe, and North and South America. The second volume concludes with a fascinating editorial overview of the pre-Pleistocene glacial record of the Earth as a whole. The reader is also presented with a collection of readily accessible statistics, maps and charts. This set will be of particular use to scholars of sedimentology, paleoclimatic patterns, climate change and ice ages, and the time-correlation of rocks.
This 1962 book is a concise study of one of the most important and complex parts of the geological succession, the middle part of the Tertiary Era, in which sediments of great economic importance (especially for the petroleum and related industries) were deposited. The authors have examined the relevant stratigraphy of New Zealand, Australasia, Oceania, Indonesia, South East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Middle East, East Africa, North Africa and the Mediterranean, the classical successions of Europe and the detailed successions of the Central American region, incorporating the expert opinion of other geologists and including much previously unpublished work by themselves and their colleagues; in particular, Dr L. R. Cox has contributed a section on the Oligocene and Aquitanian marine molluscan faunas of parts of Europe. Much of the information is presented graphically and a comprehensive description of the true Oligocene plantonic stratigraphical index foraminifera is given.
The Quaternary has been a period of major climatic and environmental oscillations, and our knowledge of these past variations is important for our understanding of the possible impact of human activity on the present-day environment. First published in 1999, Quaternary Climates, Environments and Magnetism presents an account of the rich variety of uses of magnetic measurements in the environmental geosciences. Ten chapters by leading world authorities describe the highlights of environmental magnetic work during the last decade and identify directions for future research. Emphasis is placed on a multidisciplinary approach to achieve a more thorough understanding of the environmental processes involved. This volume will be of interest to research scientists from a wide range of disciplines working on Quaternary environments, including earth and environmental sciences, physical geology, geography and palaeoclimatology. It will also be valuable as a supplementary text for graduates and advanced undergraduates.
Adam Sedgwick (1785 1873) is chiefly remembered as one of the founders of modern geology and an early mentor of Charles Darwin. Originally published in 1890, this two-part collection is composed of extensive extracts from Sedgwick's letters together with a rich, detailed account of his life and work. Both volumes are thoroughly researched and edited by J. W. Clark, with assistance from T. M. Hughes. Sedgwick was a contradictory figure who combined devotion to science with a conservatism borne of his strong religious beliefs. Whilst the text is limited in its portrayal of these contradictions as a result of proximity to its subject, this remains a well-rounded portrait that will be of value to anyone with an interest in geology or the history of science. Volume I covers the period 1785 to 1840.
Adam Sedgwick (1785 1873) is chiefly remembered as one of the founders of modern geology and an early mentor of Charles Darwin. Originally published in 1890, this two-part collection is composed of extensive extracts from Sedgwick's letters together with a rich, detailed account of his life and work. Both volumes are thoroughly researched and edited by J. W. Clark, with assistance from T. M. Hughes. Sedgwick was a contradictory figure who combined devotion to science with a conservatism borne of his strong religious beliefs. Whilst the text is limited in its portrayal of these contradictions as a result of proximity to its subject, this remains a well-rounded portrait that will be of value to anyone with an interest in geology or the history of science. Volume II covers the period 1840 to 1873.
First published in 1984, this volume and its companion relate to the work of a group of 70 scientists from Britain, China, Pakistan, Switzerland and the USA who visited the highest mountains in the world during the summer of 1980 to conduct a series of inter-related studies. Supported by the leading learned societies and professional institutions in Britain, China and Pakistan, and by government agencies in these countries, the International Karakoram Project was an expedition that fused several individual topics in the earth sciences into a unified and single study of the world's most chaotic, unstable landform. The whole project was promoted as the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Geographical Society. This volume details many of the techniques, systems, instrumentation and methods of analysis used on the Project, whilst Volume 2 concentrates on the results obtained by the scientists during the course of the Project.
First published in 1984, this volume and its companion relate to the work of a group of 70 scientists from Britain, China, Pakistan, Switzerland and the USA who visited the highest mountains in the world during the summer of 1980 to conduct a series of inter-related studies. Supported by the leading learned societies and professional institutions in Britain, China and Pakistan, and by government agencies in these countries, the International Karakoram Project was an expedition that fused several individual topics in the earth sciences into a unified and single study of the world's most chaotic, unstable landform. The whole project was promoted as the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Geographical Society. Volume II concentrates on the results obtained by the scientists during the course of the project.
Sir Harry Godwin has written a companion volume to his widely acclaimed Fenland: its ancient past and uncertain future. He follows the same historical approach that made Fenland so interesting. Vast rain-fed peat bogs still cover the landscape of northern and western Britain, their ecology, vegetation and flora unfamiliar to most of our population. Yet, through the millennia since last Ice Age, they have accumulated ever-deepening acidic peat, whose plant remains are a precious archive of the events of the past. Upon investigation, the reconstructed bog vegetation gave clues to former climatic history, pollen analysis provided a chronological scale dependent upon changes in upland forest composition and archaeological objects from the Mesolithic to the Roman period were recovered by peat-diggers from observed horizons in the bogs. The Archives of Peat Bogs will be of great interest to a wide readership comprising both amateur and professional biologists, geologists, geographers, archaeologists, naturalists and antiquarians. |
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