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The Mountains of Saint Francis - Discovering the Geologic Events That Shaped Our Earth (Hardcover)
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The Mountains of Saint Francis - Discovering the Geologic Events That Shaped Our Earth (Hardcover)
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Modern geologists, Walter Alvarez among them, showed in the last
decades of the twentieth century that the history of our planet has
witnessed events profoundly more dramatic than even the most
spectacular chapters in human history. More violent than wars, more
life altering than revolutions-understanding the geologic events
that have shaped the Earth's surface is the quest and the passion
of geologists. In the knowledgeable and graceful prose of Alvarez,
general readers are led to explore the many mysteries that our
planet guards. The author has chosen Italy as a microcosm in which
to explore this amazing past for several reasons. First, it is the
land where the earliest geologists learned how to read the history
of the Earth, written in nature's rock archives. Second, it is
where Alvarez and his Italian geological friends have continued to
decipher the rock record, uncovering more historical episodes from
the Earth's past. And third, the lovely land of Italy is unusually
rich in geological treasures and offers examples of the key
processes that have created the landscapes of the entire world. The
Mountains of Saint Francis begins in Rome. We discover that the
landscape of Rome was built by violent volcanic eruptions in the
very recent past, almost certainly witnessed by our human
ancestors. Next we travel to Siena and come face to face with a
fundamental discovery of the geologists-that much of the dry land
that we currently inhabit was once underwater, beneath ancient seas
or oceans. Then we stop in the small medieval city of Gubbio and
contemplate the amazing secret that the limestone rocks kept hidden
for 65 million years-that a huge asteroid smashed into the Earth,
disrupting the environment so severely that the dinosaurs, and
perhaps half of the other forms of life inhabiting the Earth at the
time, disappeared forever, opening the way for the rise of the
mammals and eventually of humans. The impact theory that came from
those Italian limestones at Gubbio was one of the great geological
discoveries of the twentieth century. Just as important to the
field of geology was the theory of plate tectonics-the
understanding that the outer layer of the Earth is divided into
crustal plates that move around, sometimes carrying continents into
collisions with one another, like the great collision between Italy
and Europe that built the Alps. And yet, to explain the Mountains
of Saint Francis requires something more than a collision between
continents. These are mountains that are still jealously guarding
the secret of their past, and in this book we go along with the
geological detectives as they try to uncover that secret. It is a
journey that has seen the land of Italy lifted out of the sea,
squashed and folded, torn apart, left high and dry when the
Mediterranean Sea evaporated away, and then flooded when the
Atlantic waters poured back in. The story of the Earth's history is
fascinating in its own right, but with Alvarez as the tour guide,
the journey takes on a human dimension, full of stories about the
landscape and history of Italy and about the great geologists who
uncovered the deep past of this land. It is a journey recounted in
warm tones and subtle colors, reflecting the transcendent beauty of
Italy itself.
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