To succeed in writing a book about the age of mammals in Europe appears to be a difficult goal, especially in light of such brilliant precedents as The Age of Mammals by H. F. Osborn and The Age of Mammals by Bjo¨rn Kurten. In between this book and the 1971 version of The Age of Mammals there is not only the extraordinary scientific personality of Kurten but also thirty years of additional knowledge about fossil mammals and the environment in which they evolved.

The geological structure of the Tunka Goltsy (the Tunka Range) of the East Sayany is characterized by a complex nappe-fold structure, composed mainly of Paleozoic terrigenous and carbonate rocks and their metamorphosed analogues [1–3]. It is generally recognized that the nappe-fold structure of the East Sa-yany, including its southeastern segment, regarded as the Tunka terrain [3] or Ilchirskaya zone [4], formed in the Ordovician as a result of collision between the Tuva–Mongolian microcontinent and the Siberian continent. As referred to in [5], the Ordovician–Mid-dle Paleozoic deformations over the entire vast territory of Central Asia, from the Olkhon zone of the Pribaikalie to the North Kazakhstan, were manifested as a result of the closing of the oceanic basin and the subsequent collision between the Kazakhstan– Baikalian complex continent (including the Tuva– Mongolian microcontinent) and the Siberian continent. In the Ordovician the Olkhon nappe-overthrust zone was formed along the southeastern framework of the Siberian Craton. In addition, the metamorphism was manifested over the entire vast territory of the East Sayany that could probably be connected with nappe formation. In the Late Ordovician–Silurian, the oblique slip-thrust structures, magmatism, and meta-morphism were manifested in the Sangilen highlands and Tuva. Later, the deformations continued. In the Late Devonian–Early Carboniferous, the dextral strike-slip fault Charysh–Terektinskaya zone was formed; in the Late Carboniferous, the Kurayskaya and Kuznetsko–Teletsko–Bashkaus sinistral strike-slip shear zones were formed.

Part I: State of the Mantle: Properties and Dynamic Evolution
1 Long-Wavelength Mantle Structure: Geophysical Constraints and Dynamical Models Maxwell L. Rudolph, Diogo L. Lourenço, Pritwiraj Moulik, and Vedran Lekić
2 Experimental Deformation of Lower Mantle Rocks and Minerals Lowell Miyagi
3 Seismic Wave Velocities in Earth’s Mantle from Mineral Elasticity Johannes Buchen
4 From Mantle Convection to Seismic Observations: Quantifying the Uncertainties Related to Anelasticity Bernhard S. A. Schuberth and Tobias Bigalke

Although plate tectonics and mantle plumes were introduced to geology at the same time in the 1960s and early 1970s by J. Tuzo Wilson and Jason Morgan, unlike plate tectonics, which rapidly collected supporters from the Earth S c i e n c e community, mantle plumes took a back seat. Yes, Hawaii was an example of a mantle plume and as oceanic plates moved over plumes they leave hotspot tracks. The prevailing attitude was one of "this is fine, but let's now move on to plate tectonics where the real excitement is." For twenty years geoscientists focussed most of their efforts on trying to understand plate tectonics and document examples of it in the g e o l o g i c record. It w a s not until the late 1980s that scientists turned some of their attention to mantle plumes, and indeed during the 1990s, when mantle plumes really "became of age", publications dealing with mantle plumes increased exponentially. Why the long period of dormancy for mantle plumes? I believe it was simply because geoscientists were overwhelmed by plate tectonics-a band wagon effect that influenced all of the Earth Sciences.