Two thousand million years (Ma) ago a mountain-sized bolide from Space, travelling at tens of thousands of kilometres per hour, slammed into the Earth at a position approximately 120 km southwest of the present-day city of Johannesburg, in the vicinity of the present towns of Vredefort and Parys. Within moments, it had blown a hole tens of kilometres deep and more than 100 km wide into the crust of the Earth. Th e force of the impact hurled countless millions of tonnes of rock, some of it heated to temperatures of thousands of degrees centigrade (°C), around the crater over an area extending for hundreds of kilometres from the impact site (Fig. 3a).

GRADY, M. M., HUTCHISON, R., MCCALL, G. J. H. & ROTHERY, D. A. Meteorites: their flux with time and impact effects

SHOEMAKER, E. M. Long-term variations in the impact cratering record on Earth The flux of extraterrestrial material to the Earth: determination by astronomical and statistical techniques

BAILEY, M. E. & EMEL'YANENKO, V. V. Cometary capture and the nature of the impactors NAr'IER, W. M. Galactic periodicity and the geological record 

HUGHES, D. W. The mass distribution of crater producing bodies The flux of meteorites to the Earth: determinations by terrestrial techniques

The Society of Exploration Geophysicists published Reservoir Geophysics, the predecessor of this book, in 1992. This was a time of transition in the geophysical profession and in the petroleum industry, which had suffered a significant downturn in the mid-1980s. With the exception of the months just before and after the first Gulf War, oil prices were low compared with the boom of the late 1970s. Exploration was moving toward more challenging and costly areas — deeper water, deeper targets, more remote locations. Improved recovery in existing fields became an industry imperative <...>

The Soil Science Society of America is extremely pleased to publish this comprehensive compilation of modern mineralogical methods. Co-editors April L. Ulery and L. Richard Drees have done an outstanding job of assembling this volume. This valuable work began with the vision of Dr. L. Richard Drees, who unfortunately fell ill during the early stages of the monograph and was unable to complete the task. Co-editor Dr. April Ulery has done a great job of bringing it to completion.