Compositional data arise naturally in several branches of science, including geology. In geochemistry, for example, these constrained data seem to occur typically, when one normalizes raw data or when one obtains the output from a constrained estimation procedure, such as parts per one, percentages, ppm, ppb, molar concentRations, etc.

Although mining is a conservative industry, economic drivers continue to encourage innovation and technological change. In mineral processing, equipment vendors, researchers and the operations themselves work to develop technologies that are more efficient, of lower cost and more sustainable than their predecessors. The results are apparent in new equipment and new operating practice. Any textbook needs to reflect these changes, and Barry Wills' classic is no exception.

Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones had anyone brought such grace and skill to the reconstruction of animals from disarticulated skeletons. Charles R. Knight, most celebrated of artists in the reanimation of fossils, painted all the canonical figures of dinosaurs that fire our fear and imagination to this day. In February 1942, Knight designed a chronological series of panoramas, depicting the history of life from the advent of multicellular animals to the triumph of Homo sapiens, for the National Geographic. (This is the one issue that’s always saved and therefore always missing when you see a “complete” run of the magazine on sale for two bits an issue on the back shelves of the general store in Bucolia, Maine.) He based his first painting in the series—shown on the jacket of this book—on the animals of the Burgess Shale. <...>

The Holocene is the most recent period of the earth’s history, comprising the last 10,000 years. It is characterized by a climate much milder than in the preceding glacial period, during which huge ice caps covered not only Antarctica and Greenland (as today), but also part of North America and of North Europe, as well as several other high latitude and high altitude areas <...>