Re: Phanerozoic Geology, or, Where's the Sequel?

From: Alastair McDonald (alastair_at_abmcdonald.leavethisout.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: 08/05/04 

Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 15:32:36 +0100

"Joe Bernstein" <joe@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
news:cervgm$9g4$1@reader1.panix.com...
> I'm trying to research the history of the continents and life
> thereon for a moderately, well, trivial purpose. So I'm trying
> to pick up some geology, but without spending months on it.
>
> Alan Goodwin's <Precambrian Geology> appears to be a wonderful
> book, full of detailed information about its title subject everywhere
> in the world, and with summaries of that information at several
> different levels of sophistication, so that one can, as best I
> can tell, just dip into it as much as one needs and walk away
> happy. I say "as best I can tell" because I did observe that I
> would need some vocabulary to read it, and so have been reading
> a physical geology textbook prior to starting.
>
> Anyway, now I'm spoiled. If the Archean and Proterozoic can be
> so comprehensively and handsomely treated, surely the Phanerozoic
> can too? But if it can, I don't know where it *is* so treated.
>
> The local library has one of the four volumes of <Phanerozoic
> Geology of the World>, dated 1978. Admittedly 1978 is only 11
> years before Goodwin's date, but it still unnerves me a bit. Anyway,
> the one volume in question (Mesozoic A) is all fearsomely long
> treatments of individual regions, nary a summary in sight.
>
> At the opposite extreme we have the many books whose titles are
> variations on <Historical Geology>. Some of these proceed period
> by period, and these invariably devote nine-tenths of that space
> to palaeontology, not to what the *rocks* were doing, which is what
> I'm looking for. Others put "life" and "geology" in separate
> chapters. The ones I've seen, however, still give the bulk of
> their space to the "life" chapters, and in the maybe 40 pages
> devoted to the Palaeozoic *geology*, will spend well over 30 on
> North America. Now, I'm aware that the continents have been
> different in the past from how they are now, but I'd still be
> willing to bet money that North America was not 3/4 of the Earth's
> land surface in the Palaeozoic, and anyway the pattern continues
> up to more recent times.
>
> Should I go hunting for <Phanerozoic Geology of the World> at some
> other library, because there really are summaries in the B volumes?
> Are there less one-continent-obsessed historical geology books in
> the world? Am I just *stuck* with <Phanerozoic Geology of the
> World> because nobody has *ever* done anything better since plate
> tectonics won? (And if so, what do I do about the Cenozoic, whose
> volumes are apparently unpublished?) Is there some other option?
>
> I see from recent threads that while this group, like many Usenet
> groups, is dominated by the usual kookwars, there are people here
> who answer serious questions seriously. Sorry to be asking for help
> while unable to give any, but y'know, if you ever pop into news.groups,
> rec.arts.sf.written, soc.history.ancient, or humanities.classics, I
> may be able to return the favour *there* anyway. So thank you for
> any help you can offer...
>
> Joe Bernstein
>
> --
> Joe Bernstein, bookseller and writer joe@sfbooks.com
> <http://www.panix.com/~josephb/>

I think the book you need is "New Views on an Old Planet, a history of global
change" 2nd ed. by Tjeerd H. Van Andel, Cambridge University Press. It is a
400 page paperback, and is popular enough to have warranted its second
edition.

Cheers, Alastair

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