The story of the Earth in 25 rocks : tales of important geological puzzles and the people who solved them / Donald R. Prothero.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Volcanic tuff : Vulcan's wrath : the eruption of Vesuvius -- Native copper : the iceman and the island of copper -- Cassiterite : the "isles of tin" and the bronze age -- Angular unconformity : "no vestige of a beginning" : the immensity of geologic time -- Igneous dikes : the "Earth's great heat engine" : the origin of magmas -- Coal : the rock that burns fires the industrial revolution -- Jurassic park : the map that changed the world : William Smith and the rocks of Britain -- Radioactive uranium : the atomic clock : Arthur Holmes and the age of the Earth -- Chondritic meteorites : messengers from space : the origin of the solar system -- Iron-nickel meteorites : the cores of other planets -- Moon rocks : green cheese or anorthosite : the origin of the moon -- The first sediments : early oceans and life? evidence in a grain of sand -- Stromatolites : microbial condos : cyanobacteria and the oldest life -- Banded iron formation : mountains of iron : the Earth's early atmosphere -- Turbidites : archean sediments and submarine landslides -- Diamictites : tropical glaciers and the snowball Earth -- Exotic terranes : paradox in rocks : wandering fossils and traveling landmasses -- Jigsaw-puzzle bedrock : Alfred Wegener and continental drift -- Chalk : the cretaceous seaway and greenhouse planet -- The iridium layer : the death of the dinosaurs -- Lodestones : how paleomagic launched plate tectonics -- Blueschists : the puzzle of subduction zones -- Transform faults : earthquake! the San Andreas Fault -- Messinian evaporites : the mediterranean was a desert -- Glacial erraticts : a poet, a politician, a professor, and a janitor, and the discovery of the ice ages.

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