Earth History and Palaeogeography

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.

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.