This volume presents the latest science on all significant geological and paleontological aspects of the Earth during the Late Triassic Period. Rather than presenting a collection of narrowly focused research papers, the volume consists of a series of peer-reviewed chapters on specific aspects of the Late Triassic world (e.g., tectonics, magmatism, paleobotany, climate, etc.), all authored by experts in the subject of their respective chapters. Each chapter reviews and summarizes the latest findings in these fields and also includes a review of the pertinent literature. The author list is very broadly international and forms a veritable who's who of expertise in these fields. The book is loosely organized to present the physical aspects of Earth during the Late Triassic at the outset, followed by the paleontological aspects. The latter section is further organized to present the record of the marine environment first before moving onto land, with fauna followed by flora. The volume closes with a review of the end-Triassic extinctions.

Proceedings of a Symposium held during the IUGG XVth General Assembly, Canberra, Australia, Decmber 1979

Studies of the magnetic anomalies paralleling ocean ridges have furnished partisans of continental drift with decisive arguments. To take stock of this important question, my colleague Thellier and I decided in the early summer of 1967 to make it the subject of the annual seminar on Earth physics for the school year 1967-68. Although research was still developing rapidly, the General Assembly of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics held in Switzerland in September, particularly some of the meetings in Zurich under the auspices of the International Committee for the Upper Mantle, appeared to confirm that we had made no important omissions. At the con clusion of the seminar, where I had been responsible for most of the lectures, I resolved to write the present volume for the non-specialized scientific reader. The project turned out to be a good deal more ambitious than I had thought. It is quite an undertaking nowadays to try to survey a rapidly growing subject, first of all because of the difficulty of gathering material; publication delays are now nearing one year, with the result that specialists communicate largely through a selective distribution of reports, as well as verbally in frequent colloquia. I warmly thank those who helped me in getting unpublished literature, especially Xavier Le Pichon. Even so, some essential work came to my knowledge only lately."

The proposed book would focus on the sedimentology of the Hells Kitchen Member of the Port Sussex Formation in East Falkland (Las Malvinas). This member comprises deposits documenting the switch from Icehouse to Greenhouse conditions in a fragment of the Gondwana supercontinent during the Permian. Sedimentary logging, X-Ray Fluorescence data and reflectance data measured over this interval will be presented in detail in the book and used both to support a facies evaluation and an investigation into the orbital control of climate at this time.

The time machine is one of the classic devices of science fiction, a source of endless wonder and inventiveness. In a book that transfers that sense of wonder and inventiveness to the realm of nonfiction, Peter Ward shows that paleontologists do indeed use time machines to probe the deep geological past, and that both the machines and the people using them come in a fantastic variety of types. Sometimes the time machine is as simple as a rock hammer or as humble as a magnifying glass; other times it is an esoteric piece of equipment such as a mass spectrometer. Always, the most important element is the imagination of the scientists willing to take the scientific and creative risks of plumbing the distant past of our planet and its great bestiary. In 10 separate essays united by this common theme, Time Machines prowls the world of steamy Mesozoic days and fetid Paleozoic nights to rediscover the grace and beauty of Earth's faraway past.

Revealing the incredible diversity of fossilised plants and animals preserved for millions of years, this book profiles 300 examples of the most common and fascinating fossils, using an entry by entry approach. By including examples from all of the major variety of fossilised life, from preserved trees and grasses to molluscs, trilobites, fish and dinosaurs, Fossils offers a truly comprehensive overview of fossils from every continent and gives a sense of the huge amount of natural history available to us in the fossil record. Each fossil is illustrated with a clear and informative colour photograph, accompanied by informed and accessible text. The fossilised plants and animals are grouped by order, then within each order by family (and, where necessary, within each family by subfamilies). For easy reference, each entry includes a table of information on scientific name, order and family, habitat, distribution, geological period and dimensions.

The second revised edition of the Encyclopedia of Quaternary Science, provides both students and professionals with an up-to-date reference work on this important and highly varied area of research. There are lots of new articles, and many of the articles that appeared in the first edition have been updated to reflect advances in knowledge since 2006, when the original articles were written. The second edition will contain about 375 articles, written by leading experts around the world. This major reference work is richly illustrated with more than 3,000 illustrations, most of them in colour.

Research in the Quaternary sciences has advanced greatly in the last 10 years, especially since topics like global climate change, geologic hazards and soil erosion were put high on the political agenda. This second edition builds upon its award-winning predecessor to provide the reader assured quality along with essential updated coverage.Contains 357 broad-ranging articles (4310 pages) written at a level that allows undergraduate students to understand the material, while providing active researchers with a ready reference resource for information in the field. Facilitates teaching and learning.The first edition was regarded by many as the most significant single overview of Quaternary science ever, yet Editor-in-Chief, Scott Elias, has managed to surpass that in this second edition by securing even more expert reviews whilst retaining his renowned editorial consistency that enables readers to navigates seamlessly from one unfamiliar topic to the next.

This is the first book to cover the Holocene geology and geomorphology of the 9,200 kilometers of the Brazilian coast. It is written for third and fourth year undergraduates, post-graduate students, scientists and man- ers. It characterizes the Brazilian coast in terms of the Holocene geology, geomorphology, oceanographic and climatic conditions, and the location, morphology and evolution of the barrier types. Separate chapters outline the types of barriers and coastal dynamics in each state, beginning in the south and proceeding to the north. Some emphasis is placed on the stretches of coast where the detailed morphology and stratigraphy of b- riers has been previously determined. To date, the Brazilian coastal barriers have been largely ignored by the international community, partly perhaps because much of the past research has tended to concentrate on barrier islands, of which there are very few in Brazil. In contrast, the Brazilian coastal barriers display a much wider range of types than is generally assumed. The biggest and most spectacular transgressive dunefield barriers in the world exist in Brazil, and dominate the southern and northeastern coasts. Many have never been described - fore. This volume provides a wealth of information on Holocene barrier types, evolution and dynamics. It provides managers, ecologists, biologists and botanists with much needed information on the geology, geomorph- ogy and dynamics of the genesis, types, functioning and ecosystems of the Holocene barriers extending along the entire Brazilian coast.

This book highlights some of the interesting recent and historical earthquakes (1803 Uttarkashi, 1819 Kutch, 1897 Shillong, 1905 Kangra, 1934 Nepal-Bihar, 1950 Upper Assam, 1967 Koyna, 1993 Killari, 1997 Jabalpur, 2001 Bhuj, 2004 Sumatra-Andaman, 2005 Kashmir, and 2015 Nepal) that occurred in India and in the vicinity. The tectonic and geodynamic significance of the modern (after the advent of global network) earthquakes in relation to some of the historical earthquakes like the 1819 Kachchh and 1897 Shillong and 1934 Nepal-Bihar earthquakes in the light of newer understanding is discussed. It also contains detailed expositions of seismotectonics and mechanisms of each earthquake. It concludes with touching upon future earthquake hazard scenario in India in view of the present and past earthquakes.

Reading the Soil Archives: Unraveling the Geoecological Code of Palaeosols and Sediment Cores, Volume 19, provides details of new techniques for understanding geological history in the form of quantitative pollen analyses, soil micromorphology, OSL (Optically Stimulated Luminescence) dating, phytolith analysis and biomarker analysis. The book presents the genesis of a cultural landscape, based on multi-proxy analysis of paleosoils and integration of geomorphological, pedological and archaeological research results, which can be a model for geoecological landscape studies. Beginning with analytical methods for interpreting soil archives, the book examines methods for reconstructing the landscape genesis. The book presents strengths and weaknesses of applications, especially in relation to the data from case studies in the Netherlands. The final chapter of the book addresses landscape evolution in different cultural periods. This book offers an integrated approach to geoecological knowledge that is valuable to students and professionals in quaternary science, physical geography, soil science, archaeology, historical geography, and land planning and restructuring.

"The Geologic Time Scale 2012," winner of a 2012 PROSE Award Honorable Mention for Best Multi-volume Reference in Science from the Association of American Publishers, is the framework for deciphering the history of our planet Earth. The authors have been at the forefront of chronostratigraphic research and initiatives to create an international geologic time scale for many years, and the charts in this book present the most up-to-date, international standard, as ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the International Union of Geological Sciences. This 2012 geologic time scale is an enhanced, improved and expanded version of the GTS2004, including chapters on planetary scales, the Cryogenian-Ediacaran periods/systems, a prehistory scale of human development, a survey of sequence stratigraphy, and an extensive compilation of stable-isotope chemostratigraphy.

This book is an essential reference for all geoscientists, including researchers, students, and petroleum and mining professionals. The presentation is non-technical and illustrated with numerous colour charts, maps and photographs. The book also includes a detachable wall chart of the complete time scale for use as a handy reference in the office, laboratory or field.

The most detailed international geologic time scale available that contextualizes information in one single reference for quick desktop access. Gives insights in the construction, strengths, and limitations of the geological time scale that greatly enhances its function and its utility. Aids understanding by combining with the mathematical and statistical methods to scaled composites of global succession of events. Meets the needs of a range of users at various points in the workflow (researchers extracting linear time from rock records, students recognizing the geologic stage by their content).

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.

Rifted margins mark the transition between continents and oceans, which are the two first-order types of land masses on Earth. Rifted margins contribute to our understanding of lithospheric extensional processes and are studied by various disciplines of Earth Science (geology, geophysics, geochemistry). Thanks to better and wider public access to high-quality data, our understanding in these areas has improved significantly over these last two decades. This book summarizes this knowledge evolution and details where we stand today, with a series of case examples included. It is structured in a practical way, with concise text descriptions and comprehensive diagrams. Continental Rifted Margins 2 is a useful resource for students and newcomers to the rifted margin community - a "cookbook" of sorts to facilitate the reading of scientific publications and provide basic definitions and explanations.

A Concise Geologic Time Scale: 2016 presents a summary of Earth's history over the past 4.5 billion years, as well as a brief overview of contemporaneous events on the Moon, Mars, and Venus. The authors have been at the forefront of chronostratigraphic research and initiatives to create an international geologic time scale for many years, and the charts in this book present the most up-to-date international standard, as ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the International Union of Geological Sciences. This book is an essential reference for all geoscientists, including researchers, students, and petroleum and mining professionals. The presentation is non-technical and illustrated with numerous colour charts, maps and photographs.

First published in 2005, this book represents the first full length biography of John Phillips, one of the most remarkable and important scientists of the Victorian period. Adopting a broad chronological approach, this book not only traces the development of Phillips' career but clarifies and highlights his role within Victorian culture, shedding light on many wider themes. It explores how Phillips' love of science was inseparable from his need to earn a living and develop a career which could sustain him. Hence questions of power, authority, reputation and patronage were central to Phillips' career and scientific work. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources and a rich body of recent writings on Victorian science, this biography brings together his personal story with the scientific theories and developments of the day, and fixes them firmly within the context of wider society.

A major new look at how Africa's geological history, climate, geography and biology resulted in the wonderful diversity of life found there. It is also the story of how it was the crucible for the evolution most extraordinary species on Earth - Homo sapiens.

Africa has properties that ensure that most of human evolution could have occurred nowhere else. A greater diversity of mammal, bird and many other forms of life has forced more and more species to squeeze into narrower and narrower niches. Human complexity has evolved directly in response to this, the most complex of continents.

On offer here is an intensely personal portrait of a continent bolstered by Jonathan Kingdon's own animal senses, the same excited set of senses he was born in Africa with. Senses that look, listen, scent and grasp at the mother-continent. Not just his personal motherland but the birthplace of all humanity.

Past Glacial Environments, Second Edition, presents a revised and updated version of the very successful first edition of Menzies' book, covering a breadth of topics with a focus on the recognition and analysis of former glacial environments, including the pre-Quaternary glaciations. The book is made up of chapters written by various geological experts from across the world, with the editor's expertise and experience bringing the chapters together. This new and updated volume includes at least 45% new material, along with five new chapters that include a section on techniques and methods. Additionally, this new edition is presented in full color and features a large collection of photographs, line diagrams, and tables with examples of glacial environments and landscapes that are drawn from a worldwide perspective. Informative knowledge boxes and case studies are included, helping users better understand critical issues and ideas.

Written by the world's leading expert, this is an accessible introduction to optical dating for earth scientists who rely on the results given without needing to understand the technicalities of the technique. The basic notions and procedures are outlined through illustrative case histories. In addition the book provides active practitioners with a full understanding of the theory, through a series of technical notes, and brings together the various strands of ongoing research.

Sentient Conceptualisations is about how scientists studying the past understand time in relation to space. Simonetti argues that the feelings for depths and surfaces, arising from the bodily movements and gestures of scientific practice, strongly influence conceptualisations of space and time. With an anthropological eye, Simonetti explores the ways archaeologists and those from related disciplines develop expert knowledge in varied environments. The book draws on ethnographic work carried out with Chilean and Scottish archaeologists, working both on land and underwater, to analyse in depth the visual language of science and what it reveals about the relation between thinking and feeling.

This book aims to view and to understand Alexander von Humboldt from different perspectives and in varying disciplinary contexts. His contributions addressed numerous topics in the earth but also life sciences-spanning from geo-botany, climatology, paleontology, oceanography, mineralogy, resources, and hydrogeology to links between the environmental impact of humans, erosion, and climate change. From the very beginning, he paved the way for a modern, integrated earth system science approach to decipher, characterize, and model the different forcing factors and their feedback mechanisms. It becomes obvious that Humboldt's holistic approach is far beyond simple description and empiric data collection. As documented and analyzed in the different texts of this volume, he combines observation and analysis with emotions and subjective perceptions in a very affectionate way. However, this publication does not intend to add another encyclopedic text compilation but to observe and critically analyze this unique personalitys relevance in a modern context, particularly in discussing environmental and social key issues in the twenty-first century.

Examines the various forms of evidence used to establish the history and scale of environmenal changes during the Quaternary. The evidence is extremely diverse, ranging from landforms and sediments to fossil assemblages and isotope ratios, bringing the book fully up to date since its last publication.

The Noerdlinger Ries and Steinheim Basin, two conspicuous geological structures in southern Germany, were traditionally viewed as somewhat enigmatic but nevertheless definitely volcanic edifices until they were finally recognized as impact craters in the 1960s. The changing views about the origin of the craters mark an important paradigm shift in the Earth sciences, from an Earth-centric approach to a planetary perspective that acknowledged Earth's place in the wider cosmos. Drawing on a range of printed sources, detailed archival material, letters, personal notes, and interviews with veterans of Ries research, Martina Koelbl-Ebert provides a detailed reconstruction, not only of the historical sequence of events throughout the twentieth century, but also of the personal thoughts, emotions and motives of the scientists involved and the social context of their research. She shows that there was a sudden reconnection of German researchers with the international scientific community, particularly with more progressive American researchers, after some twenty-five years of scientific isolation during the build-up to WWII and its aftermath. This reconnection brought about not only a new view of geoscience, but also saved German geology from self-sufficiency and patriotic arrogance by integrating it in an interdisciplinary and international framework. In so doing this book sheds much valuable light on an under-explored but crucial development in the way we understand Earth's history, as well as the way that science functioned during times of conflict.

Although the history of orchards and fruit varieties is of great popular interest, there have been few academic treatments of the subject. This book presents results from a three-year project, 'Orchards East', investigating the history and ecology of orchards in the east of England. Together, the eastern counties of Hertfordshire, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk have a tradition of fruit cultivation comparable in scale to that of the better-known west of England. Drawing on far-reaching archival research, an extensive survey of surviving orchards and biodiversity surveys, the authors tell the fascinating story of orchards in the east since the late Middle Ages. Orchards were ubiquitous features of the medieval and early modern landscape. Planted for the most part for practical reasons, they were also appreciated for their aesthetic qualities. By the seventeenth century some districts had begun to specialise in fruit production - most notably west Hertfordshire and the Fens around Wisbech. But it was only in the 'orchard century', beginning in the 1850s, that commercial production really took off, fuelled by the growth of large urban markets and new transport systems that could take the fruit to them with relative ease. By the 1960s orchards were extensive in many districts but, since then, they have largely disappeared, with significant impacts on landscape character and biodiversity. For well over a century now, orchards have been romanticised as nostalgic elements of a timeless yet disappearing rural world. Even before that, they were embedded in myths of lost Edens, or golden ages of effortless plenty. A key aim of this book is to challenge some of these myths by grounding orchards within a wider range of historical and environmental contexts. Orchards are not timeless, and in some ways our relationship with orchards is a classic example of the 'invention of tradition'. What do our attitudes to this aspect of our heritage tell us about our wider engagement with the past, with nature, and with place?

Tuzo is the never-before-told story of one of Canada's most influential scientists and the discovery of plate tectonics, a pivotal development that forever altered how we think of our planet. In 1961, a Canadian geologist named John "Jock" Tuzo Wilson (1908-1993) jettisoned decades of strongly held opposition to theories of moving continents and embraced the idea that they drift across the surface of the Earth. Tuzo tells the fascinating life story of Tuzo Wilson, from his early forays as a teenaged geological assistant working on the remote Canadian Shield in the 1920s to his experiences as a civilian-soldier in the Second World War to his ultimate role as the venerated father of plate tectonics. Illuminating how science is done, this book blends Tuzo's life story with the development of the theory of plate tectonics, showing along the way how scientific theories are debated, rejected, and accepted. Gorgeously illustrated, Tuzo will appeal to anyone interested in the natural world around them.

A gripping history of the polar continent, from the great discoveries of the nineteenth century to modern scientific breakthroughs Antarctica, the ice kingdom hosting the South Pole, looms large in the human imagination. The secrets of this vast frozen desert have long tempted explorers, but its brutal climate and glacial shores notoriously resist human intrusion. Land of Wondrous Cold tells a gripping story of the pioneering nineteenth-century voyages, when British, French, and American commanders raced to penetrate Antarctica's glacial rim for unknown lands beyond. These intrepid Victorian explorers-James Ross, Dumont D'Urville, and Charles Wilkes-laid the foundation for our current understanding of Terra Australis Incognita. Today, the white continent poses new challenges, as scientists race to uncover Earth's climate history, which is recorded in the south polar ice and ocean floor, and to monitor the increasing instability of the Antarctic ice cap, which threatens to inundate coastal cities worldwide. Interweaving the breakthrough research of the modern Ocean Drilling Program with the dramatic discovery tales of its Victorian forerunners, Gillen D'Arcy Wood describes Antarctica's role in a planetary drama of plate tectonics, climate change, and species evolution stretching back more than thirty million years. An original, multifaceted portrait of the polar continent emerges, illuminating our profound connection to Antarctica in its past, present, and future incarnations. A deep-time history of monumental scale, Land of Wondrous Cold brings the remotest of worlds within close reach-an Antarctica vital to both planetary history and human fortunes.