The Geological Evolution of Australia and New Zealand / Геологическая эволюция Австралии и Новой Зеландии

Knowledge of the geology of the Australasian region has expanded apace since the end ofWorld War II as a result of two main factors—the extensive programme of reconnaissance mapping being carried out by the Common wealth Bureau of Mineral Resources and the various State Geological Surveys, and the 1:250,000 mapping project of the New Zealand Geological Survey, on the one hand, and the increased activity of oil and mining companies, particularly in geophysical and drilling work, on the other. All phases of this work are still proceeding and no doubt will continue, perhaps at an increasing rate. Consequently in a book of this kind, all that can be offered is a single (and somewhat arbitrary) cross-section ofa continuously and rapidly developing spectrum of ideas. Many of the data that have been collected are not yet available in published form, being either in oil company files or awaiting publication by governmental agencies, so that some of the opinions expressed here will have to be modified almost before the book is published. Under such circumstances, publication at the present time needs some justification.

This work is not intended to be a detailed compendium ofthe stratigraphy of Australia and New Zealand, though it is hoped that it may in some measure meet the need for an up-to-date teaching aid in this field. It may, in particular, be used to assist students to obtain a knowledge ofthe stratigraphy of their own country, so as to supplement and illustrate the courses on stratigraphic principles that have formed an increasing part of formal teaching in stratigraphy in recent years. For Australia, it cannot, of course, replace David and Browne’s Geology of the Commonwealth of Australia as a source of information. This excellent work, however, was issued in 1950 (and is now out of print), too early to incorporate the major post-war advances in knowledge. Moreover, the State geology volumes being issued by the Geological Society of Australia are in the nature of reference works rather than textbooks, and to date there are none available for New South Wales, Victoria, or the Northern Territory. Other works, such as The Geology of Australian Ore Deposits and The Economic Geology of New Zealand, published by the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy for the Eighth Commonwealth Mining and Metallurgical Conference, are concerned with special aspects of Australasian geology. <...>