Using full-colour palaeogeographical maps from the Cambrian to the present, this interdisciplinary volume explains how plate motions and surface volcanism are linked to processes in the Earth's mantle, and to climate change and the evolution of the Earth's biota. These new and very detailed maps provide a complete and integrated Phanerozoic story of palaeogeography. They illustrate the development of all the major mountain-building orogenies. Old lands, seas, ice caps, volcanic regions, reefs, and coal beds are highlighted on the maps, as well as faunal and floral provinces. Many other original diagrams show sections from the Earth's core, through the mantle, and up to the lithosphere, and how Large Igneous Provinces are generated, helping to understand how plates have appeared, moved, and vanished through time. Supplementary resources are available online, making this an invaluable reference for researchers, graduate students, professional geoscientists and anyone interested in the geological history of the Earth.
ISBN-13: 9781107105324
Media Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: 12-01-2016
Pages: 332
Product Dimensions: 8.86(w) x 11.14(h) x 0.79(d)
Trond H. Torsvik is the Founding Director of the Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED), University of Oslo and Honorary Professor at Wits University, Johannesburg. He is a Member of the Norwegian Academy, and was awarded the prestigious Arthur Holmes Medal from the European Union of Geosciences in 2016 and the Leopold Von Buch Medal from the German Geological Society in 2015 for outstanding achievements in the geosciences, among various other awards and prizes. He has written over 200 publications in refereed journals and books.
L. Robin M. Cocks OBE TD is a Scientific Associate in the Department of Earth Sciences at the Natural History Museum, London, where he was formerly Keeper of Palaeontology. He has been President of the Geological Society of London, the Palaeontological Association, the Geologists' Association and the Palaeontographical Society. In 1995 he was awarded the Geological Society's Coke Medal, and in 2010 the Lapworth Medal by the Paleaontological Association, its highest honour.
Table of Contents
Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction; 2. Methods for locating old continents and terranes; 3. Tectonic units of the Earth; 4. Earth's origins and the Precambrian; 5. Cambrian; 6. Ordovician; 7. Silurian; 8. Devonian; 9. Carboniferous; 10. Permian; 11. Triassic; 12. Jurassic; 13. Cretaceous; 14. Paleogene; 15. Neogene and Quaternary; 16. Climates past and present; Endnote; Appendix 1. Location of Phanerozoic Large Igneous Provinces; Appendix 2. Mesozoic to modern Panthalassic and Pacific Ocean plates; Appendix 3. Orogenies; References; Index.
