The art of fossils has long been recognized, and specimens of ancient life have formed a staple of beautifully and elaborately illustrated treatises - that is, art by any definition - since the dawn of publishing (from the 16th century plates of Mercati'sVatican Museum fossils, though not published until the early 18th century; to the flood illustrations of Scheuchzer Physica Sacra of the 1720's; to the magnificent illustrations of Haeckel's early 20th century Kunstformen der Natur, where the layout and geometry of elaborately symmetrical fossils blur the boundary between accurate illustration and the artistic conventions of the reigning Jugendstil). But, in this novel and wonderful compilation, Seilacher has broken new ground, both aesthetically and intellectually, in the presentation of fossils as art.

Near the southern margin of the African continent, a ringwall of mountains holds up a vast interior desert known as the Great Karoo. It is far from anywhere, in both space and time. The Karoo is a Lost World.

In the Khoikhoi language, Karoo means "land of thirst." It is a broad plateau that is either too hot or too cold for human comfort and always too dry; a place where water is a rarity and where your skin dries and ages even at night.

This beautifully presented course manual supporting Snowden Mining Industry Consultants renowned course in Resource Estimation represents the culmination of more than 20 years of course refinements, revisions, improvements and further refinements. No doubt the manual will continue to be improved in the future as new information becomes available and new techniques are introduced. After all a course manual must be a dynamic, living document that remains relevant to the mining industry.

The 41 contributors to this monograph are members of the Precambrian Paleobiology Research Group (PPRG), a multidisciplinary, international consortium of physical and biological scientists actively investigating the Precambrian history of the earth, and of life. Initially organized more than a decade ago, the PPRG includes geologists and biologists of diversebackgrounds and expertise: sedimentologists, petrologists, geochemists, and atmospheric scientists, microbiologists, phycologists, molecular phylogenists, and paleontologists. In 1979—80—supported by NASA and by funds provided by the National Science Board's 1977 Alan T. Waterman Award to J. W. Schopf—the group worked together at UCLA for 14 months on problems centered on the paleobiology of the Archean, the earlier half of Precambrian time encompassing the initial 40% of the history of the planet (viz., extending from 4500 to 2500 Ma ago).

Central Europe is a complex mosaic of crustal elements, including Cadomian fragments, Caledonian and Variscan microcontinents and suture zones, as well as Mesozoic and Alpine tectonostratigraphic successions (Fig. 1.1). These disparate elements were assembled during the various Precambrian and Phanerozoic (Caledonian, Variscan and Alpine) orogenies, the end result being a geological history of over 3500 million years. Over this long and complex period of crustal evolution, older consolidated crustal elements were repeatedly remobilized and overprinted by later events. 

The Geology of Alaska summarizes the onshore and offshore geology, tectonic evolution, and mineral resources of Alaska and the adjacent continental margin. The volume was prepared at a particularly appropriate time because it follows a period during which there has been an explosive increase in the amount, quality, and regional coverage of earth science data collected in Alaska and because the unifying concepts of plate tectonics and accretionary terranes have become available as a framework for interpreting the data.