The discovery of “deep time” is one of geology’s greatest contributions to human understanding. The conceptual foundations laid by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century geologists working in relatively small geographic areas paved the way for development of the modern high-resolution geological timescale (figure 1.1), which spans 4.6 billion years of Earth history and applies to geological features anywhere on Earth.

The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (The AusIMM) is the leading organisation representing technical minerals sector professionals in the Australasian Region.  Members are bound by a Code of Ethics, and continual improvement of professional and industry standards within the sector in which they work.

This book is written for anyone who wants to get quickly ‘up to speed’ on some aspect of reflection seismology as it affects the seismic interpreter. It is a development of course notes on seismic reflection interpretation which have been given to students on the MSc course in Petroleum Geology at Aberdeen University over many years, and thus it takes the form of a course manual rather than a systematic textbook. It can be used as a self-contained course for individual study or as the basis of a class programme. The notes were originally provided to make the subject more accessible to geology students, but this volume should also prove useful to others, such as petroleum engineers, who have to work in an integrated exploration or development team side by side with geophysicists and geologists. Much petroleum exploration and production is now driven by the seismic reflection survey technique, so that all team members need to know quite a lot about it.<...>

Foraminifera have an evolutionary history that extends back to the Cambrian, more than 525 million years ago. Since then, they have radiated and evolved. To date, approximately 60,000 fossil and modern species have been validly recognized (LANGER, 2011), and an estimated 10,000 species (including only 40-50 planktonic species) are still living (VICKERMAN, 1992), constituting the most diverse group of shelled microorganisms in modern oceans (SEN GUPTA, 1999). These small-sized organisms, usually 0.1 to 1 mm, may be very abundant, and tens of thousands living specimens per square meter may be found in some environments (WETMORE, 1995). Their mineralized tests (shells) usually get preserved in the sediment after the death of the organism and may constitute a major, sometimes the dominant, part of many modern or fossil sediments (fig. 1). They are easy to collect, and their high-density populations provide an adequate statistical base, even in small volume samples, to perform environmental analyses, making them a powerful tool for environmental assessment. <...>

The Earth is approximately spherical, with a mean radius R = 6370km, a very small flattening (+7/ − 15km), mass  6 × 1024kg, and an average density 5.5g/cm3; the law of gravitational attraction is F = GmMr/r3, where F is the force directed along the separation distance r between two point bodies with mass m and M; and G = 6.67 × 10−8cm3/g · s2 is the gravitation constant.

In 1988, at the request of members of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration (SME), Inc., the President of SME formed Working Party #79, Ore Reserve Definition, with the mission to develop guidelines for the public reporting of exploration information, resources, and reserves. A Subcommittee was appointed by the Working Party to draft these guidelines and submit recommendations to SME. The Subcommittee’s recommendations were published by SME in the April 1991 issue of “Mining Engineering”, and as a document entitled “A Guide for Reporting Exploration Information, Resources, and Reserves” in January 1992. Work continued on an ad-hoc basis until 1996, when Working Party #79 was renamed the SME Committee on Resources and Reserves and became a standing committee. <...>

T. rex crashes through the trees and leaps on a juvenile Triceratops. The huge predator has scaly skin and tufts of colorful feathers over its eyes; it crunches through the bones of the terrified herbivore with a force of several tons . . .
We are familiar with this kind of scene from the movies, but how much of it is guesswork? When we look at dinosaur behavior, we’re examining every aspect of how these remarkable beasts lived. Do we need a time machine to be sure what they looked like and how they behaved? The answer is, not necessarily. We have fossils, and we have smart ways to compare those fossils to modern animals. <...>

The fi rst three parts of the section address the development of soil mechanics and geotechnical engineering as a distinct discipline over the past 80 years or so. Chapter 2 Foundations and other geotechnical elements in context - their role explains the importance of foundations and structures built in or of the ground within civil engineering and construction, and the need for a formal and holistic geotechnical engineering design process. Chapter 3 A brief history of the development of geotechnical engineering gives a history of the development of geotechnical engineering at the borderline between science and art, with the latter defi ned by Terzaghi in 1957 as a ‘mental processes leading to satisfactory results without the assistance of step-for-step logical reasoning’. This is refl ected in the ‘geotechnical triangle’, described in Chapter 4 The geotechnical triangle, which emphasises the essential elements of successful geotechnical engineering as understanding the ground, material properties and relevant precedence (well-winnowed experience), connected by an appropriate model for analysis. <...>