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

From: Joe Bernstein (joe_at_sfbooks.com)
Date: 08/07/04 

Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 01:41:15 +0000 (UTC)

In article <T0iQc.1426$zJ4.274@bignews1.bellsouth.net>, George
<George@george.net> wrote:

> "Joe Bernstein" <joe@sfbooks.com> wrote in message
> news:cervgm$9g4$1@reader1.panix.com...

> > 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.
 
> Try these references, and see if they are what you are looking for.

I wrote a somewhat hostile reply to this answer yesterday, so am
amused that my actual choices were both suggested by references
I got from the following list, though neither is *in* the following
list...
 
> Ron Blakey, Department of Geology, Northern Arizona University,
> Flagstaff: Global Earth History. This presentation uses a series of
> plate-tectonic reconstructions to show the broad patterns of
> Phanerozoic Earth history. Both horizontal and vertical links are
> provided for viewing the plates: horizontal links provide time-slices
> (eg Cambrian, Devonian, Triassic, etc.) of different kinds of data on
> maps and other illustrations whereas vertical links provide a
> dynamic portrayal of Earth history through a succession of similar
> plate-tectonic reconstructions.

This turned out to be a seriously cool site. I had found scotese.com
by accident, more or less, but found it useful; *this* site is the
only one I've found that seems worth putting next to it.

> ! Harald Immel, Institut für Paläontologie und Historische
> Geologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München
> (Paläontologische Gesellschaft): Literaturempfehlungen zur
> "Allgemeinen Paläontologie", and Literaturempfehlungen
> zur "Historischen Geologie". Textbook recommendations, in German.

One of the two books I ended up borrowing is Windley's <Evolving
Continents> (um, I think; it's not with me) which I got from these
lists. My thanks.

> International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) ICS is the largest
> scientific body within the International Union of Geological Sciences
> (IUGS). It is also the only organisation concerned with stratigraphy
> on a global scale.

Just wanted to mention that one of the basic pieces of paper I carry
with me when going to the library over this stuff is a printout of
the latest geological timescale from stratigraphy.org... and as anyone
who *did* go to my website may be able to tell, these are the people
I got the date the chronology starts with from, too. (In fact, the
contrast between the usual "roughly 4.6 Gya" and the ICS's very
definite "4.567+-whatever Gya" is what got me started on the whole
precision-in-dating schtick. I'd've headed that way anyway, I think,
from what I know of how I work, but the ICS is who *actually* prompted
it...)

> Kevin McCartney, Northern Maine Museum of Science, University of
> Maine at Presque Isle: Historical Geology.

Of the sites I picked, off your list, as worth visiting before hearing
back from you, this was the real disappointment. Turned out to be
basically a bunch of empty pages. I assume there used to be more
there?

> Hugh Rance, City University of New York: The Present is the Key to
> the Past. An electronic, college level, introductory historical
> geology textbook.

This sounded so cool I just had to look. It is, however, rather
annoyingly set up; you have to read it by clicking on links, one
after another every page or two, and hitting the back button in
between. Even so, I checked the relevant chapters to see if it
had the detail I wanted, but it didn't.

What it did have was a charmingly opinionated introduction, in
which the author specifically blasts the dry as dust, information-
packed, antiquated approach of Kummel. I recognised Kummel's title
as that of a book we'd had in the house when I was a kid, which was
more or less my introduction to serious palaeontology, though I'm
pretty sure I never got *that* much out of it. On going back to
it I was very pleased to find that it indeed has *lots* of space
for (uninteresting-to-kids) rocks, and organises the treatment of
these as one chapter North America, one chapter everywhere else,
for each unit of time; this has the effect of confining North
America to a mere 50% of the space, giving the other continents
a *substantial* increase in actual page count over more current
texts. This is especially true because Kummel doesn't spend much
space on palaeogeography as per plate tectonics, which he seems to
see either as not yet proven or as not all that interesting. So
his chapters on the rest of the world are actually about the
rocks *in* the individual continents, not about how they wandered.

The upshot: I will be using Windley and Kummel, more or less in
parallel, one to supply basic geology and the other to supply the
plate tectonics that should have informed it. I will be using
these as *introductions*, much as I used Nisbet's <Young Earth>
as an introduction to the Archean, and for the detailed information
which I hope not to have to read thoroughly, but do need access to
- comparable to the central chapters of Goodwin - I'll just have to
rely on what I can find of <The Phanerozoic Geology of the World>,
some continent-level overviews, and, well, the rest of the geology
books at the library, pretty much.

So thanks!

Joe Bernstein 

-- 
Joe Bernstein, bookseller and writer                   joe@sfbooks.com
<http://www.panix.com/~josephb/>
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