Footnote:
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description:
1. Volcanic tuff : Vulcan's wrath : the eruption of Vesuvius. - 2. Native copper : the iceman and the island of copper. - 3. Cassiterite : the "isles of tin" and the Bronze Age. - 4. Angular unconformity : "no vestige of a beginning" : the immensity of geologic time. - 5. Igneous dikes : the "Earth's great heat engine" : the origin of magmas. - 6. Coal : the rock that burns fires the industrial revolution. - 7. Jurassic world : the map that changed the world : William Smith and the rocks of Britain. - 8. Radioactive uranium : clocks in rocks : Arthur Holmes and the age of the Earth. - 9. Chondritic meteorites : messengers from space : the origin of the solar system. - 10. Iron-nickel meteorites : the cores of other planets. - 11. Moon rocks : green cheese or anorthosite? : the origin of the moon. - 12. Zircons : early oceans and life? : evidence in a grain of sand. - 13. Stromatolites : microbial condos : cyanobacteria and the oldest life. - 14. Banded iron formation : mountains of iron : the Earth's early atmosphere. - 15. Turbidites : Archean sediments and submarine landslides. - 16. Diamictites : tropical glaciers and the Snowball Earth. - 17. Exotic terranes : paradox in rocks : wandering fossils and traveling landmasses. - 18. Jigsaw-puzzle bedrock : Alfred Wegener and continental drift. - 19. Chalk : the Cretaceous Seaway and the greenhouse planet. - 20. The iridium layer : the death of the dinosaurs. - 21. Lodestones : how paleomagic launched plate tectonics. - 22. Blueschists : the puzzle of subduction zones. - 23. Transform faults : earthquake! : the San Andreas Fault. - 24. Messinian evaporites : the Mediterranean was a desert. - 25. Glacial erratics : a poet, a professor, a politician, a janitor, and the discovery of the ice ages