The Geology of North America series has been prepared to mark the Centennial of The Geological Society of America. It represents the cooperative efforts of more than 1,000 individuals from academia, state and federal agencies of many countries, and industry to prepare syntheses that are as current and authoritative as possible about the geology of the North American continent and adjacent oceanic regions.

The first chapter of the book provides some essential historical background to the modern story of sequence stratigraphy. The history of the study of stratigraphy includes two parallel but largely independent strands of research that have been underway since at least the early twentieth century. They are characterized by some profound differences in underlying principles, references and research methods, one research method being essentially empirical and inductive in approach, while another groups of researchers has attempted to develop deductive, theoretical models for understanding Earth history. Chapter 1 is based largely on four papers which explored this history (Miall and Miall, 2001, 2002, 2004; Miall, 2004). It is to be hoped that readers will not skip this chapter, because experience suggests that students of geology do not learn enough about the history, philosophy, or methodology of their science.<...>

Antamina is the largest known copper-zinc skarn (>3000 Mt @ 1.1% Cu and 1.3% Zinc) in the world. It is located in the Northern Andes in Peru, 270 km north of Lima. The deposit formed at approximately 10 Ma by the emplacement of quartz monzonite intrusions into Mid to Late Cretaceous limestones of the Celendin and Jumasha Formations. Mineralisation is hosted as a series of zoned green and brown garnet endoskarns and exoskarns in the form of chalcopyrite, bornite and sphalerite. Elements present within the deposit of significant quantities to affect concentrate value are Cu, Zn, Mo, Ag, Bi and Pb. Antamina produces four concentrates, namely, copper (chalcopyrite and bornite), zinc (sphalerite), molybdenum and lead-silver-bismuth.

The history of recorded geological observations of the Egyptian Eastern Desert and Sinai is divided into five stages: Pharaonic, Roman to early Ottoman, nineteenth century, twentieth century to the 1950s and post-1950s. Pharaonic interests were mainly resource-focused (gold, gemstones, hard stone) and are exemplified by the Turin Papyrus geological map. Roman to early Ottoman activities followed similar motivations and transported huge quantities of Egyptian stone across the Mediterranean.