Paleontology is the study of prehistoric life. It combines several fields, including geology (study of rocks), biology (study of living things), and chemistry (study of the basic building blocks of matter), to help piece together the evidence collected from fossils and the surrounding rocks. This evidence is usually incomplete because many important details are not preserved during the fossilization process. To make up for these gaps in information, paleontologists study fossils of similar species, as well as modern-day animals, to help them build a picture of prehistoric creatures and understand how they might have lived.

Porphyry-style Cu-Au/Mo deposits are among the most sought after targets for both base and precious metal exploration in the world today. Of particular interest are the "super porphyry" copper and or gold deposits, because of their size, grade and ability to support large scale, long life, profitable operations.

The term "super porphyry" is interpreted loosely in this publication, relating in general to the largest deposits in any established porphyry province. For a discussion of the accepted terminology and size classification of large porphyry-style deposits, see the introduction section of Richards, (2005) in this publication.

Forty years ago when plate tectonics was first discovered, there was a major shift in thinking in the Earth Sciences. Little was known at that time about the deep mantle because of the lack of knowledge about material properties, the absence of any seismic tomography or concepts such as mantle convection. Thus the theory of plate tectonics was built on surface observations and kinematic constraints. The theory of plate tectonics is not independent but consists of several assumptions. Examples are the origin of arc magma, MORB or OIB, and the distribution of earthquakes and the plate margin processes are all part of plate tectonics theory. <...>

Neotethyan suprasubduction zone ophiolites represent anomalous oceanic crust developed in older host basins during trench rollback cycles and later entrapped in orogenic belts as a result first of trench-passive margin and then continent–continent collisions. The Middle Jurassic Mirdita zone ophiolites in northern Albania constitute a critical transition between the dominantly mid-ocean ridge basalt (MORB)-related Early Jurassic Alpine–Apennine ophiolites in the west and supra-subduction zone (SSZ)-generated Cretaceous Eastern Mediterranean ophiolites in the east. The previously recognized Western- and Eastern-type ophiolites in the Mirdita zone display significant differences in their internal structure and pseudostratigraphy, but their geochemical affinities are more gradational in contrast to the earlier claims that these ophiolites may have formed in different tectonic settings at different times. Crosscutting relations of dike intrusions in the Eastern-type ophiolites indicate changes in the chemistry of magmatic plumbing systems from basaltic to andesitic, dacitic, rhyodacitic, and boninitic compositions through time and from west to east.