Minerals: Their Constitution and Origin is an introduction to mineralogy for undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of geology, materials science, and environmental science. It has been designed as a textbook for use on a semester course and covers all aspects of mineralogy in a thoroughly modern and integrated way.

Over the past two decades, many curriculum changes have occurred in geology, Earth science, and environmental science programs in universities. Many of these have involved the compression of separate one-semester courses in mineralogy, optical mineralogy, and petrology into a singlesemester offering that combines mineralogy and petrology, commonly called Earth Materials. Such a course is a challenge to the instructor (or a team of instructors) and the students. This is especially so when few, if any, textbooks for such a one-semester course have been available.

The fundamental concepts of mineralogy and petrology are explained in this highly illustrated, full-color textbook, to create a concise overview for students studying Earth materials. The relationship between minerals and rocks and how they relate to the broader Earth, materials, and environmental sciences is interwoven throughout. Beautiful photos of specimens and CrystalViewer’s three-dimensional illustrations allow students to easily visualize minerals, rocks, and crystal structures.

Radiogenic and stable isotopes are used widely in the Earth sciences to determine the ages of rocks, meteorites, and archeological objects, and as tracers to understand geological and environmental processes. Isotope methods determine the age of the Earth, help reconstruct the climate of the past, and explain the formation of the chemical elements in the Universe.

Metamorphism refers lo Ihe inineni logical and structural alteration of rock к in Karth's crust, and excludes alteration at or just beneath ihe surface, such as weathering and early diagencsis. However, diagenetic changes grade into mctamorphic changes in burial meuimorphism. In face* metamor-phism may occur in several geological environments, because assemblages react to changes in temperature (T), pressure (iJ) and activities of mobile chemical components, regardless ol the geological processes responsible for the changes. For example, identical or very similar assemblages can be formed by (1) deuleric alteration in an igneous intrusion 12) wall-rock alteration around a hydro! hernia) orebody. (3) low-tempe rat lire alteration around an igneous intrusion, (4) burial metamorphism of sedimentary/volcanic successions and (5) alteration, both local and regional, in geothermal areas (Vernon. 1976f.

This volume is devoted to the memory of the Russian petrologist D.S. Korzhinskiy. The world community of geoscientists has highly valued his contributions to petrology, particularly the discovery and thermodynamic description of open systems with perfectly mobile components. Korzhinskiy's work reached this community's attention because his book Physicochemical Basis of the Analysis of the Paragenesis of Minerals (1959, Consultants Bureau, New York) was translated into English. However, in the Soviet Union D.S. Korzhinskiy is also highly regarded for his contributions to geology and study of ore deposits as well as to theoretical petrology. Stratigraphy and geology of the Precambrian Aldan shield in Eastern Siberia; origin of lapis lazuli and phlogopite deposits and iron formations; boron mineralization; genesis of skarns and general theory of metasomatic zoning; origin of granites, charnockites and anorthosites; theory of the acid-basic interaction of components in the dry silicate melts: all of these were subjects of his more than 200 papers and books. The papers in the present volume span Korzhinskiy's broad interests. These papers were selected with the aim of illustrating the progress made in physicochemical petrology since Korzhinskiy.

Petrology, from the Greek words petra , meaning rock, and logos, meaning knowledge, is the study of rocks and the conditions in which they form. It includes igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary petrology.

Processes involved in the development of igneous and metamorphic rocks involve some combination of crystal growth, solution, movement and deformation, which is expressed as changes in texture (microstructure). Recent advances in the quantification of aspects of crystalline rock textures, such as crystal size, shape, orientation and position, have opened new avenues of research that extend and complement the more dominant chemical and isotopic studies.

This book introduces the reader to the study of plant fossils, and is especially aimed at those who have had little previous experience of this type of palaeontology. We have provided an illustrated text that summarises the main groups of plants that occur as fossils and explains how one should go about investigating them. Practical guidance is given on techniques that can be used to reveal hidden details of anatomical and reproductive characters, as well as the sorts of features that are used to identify some of the most commonly found plant fossils. Many of the approaches that are used to interpret plant fossils are discussed and we show how they can be used by the palaeobotanist to increase our knowledge of plant evolution, palaeoecology, palaeogeography and stratigraphy.

The Sedimentary Record of Sea-Level Change is about how we can detect past changes in sea-level from an analysis of the sedimentary record. In particular, it concentrates on the revolutionary new concept of sequence stratigraphy. This concept has changed the way in which many sedimentologists and stratigraphers examine sedimentary rocks because it provides a framework for how entire sedimentary systems evolve through geological time and places emphasis not only on the sediments themselves, but also on gaps between sedimentary units. In addition, sequence stratigraphy incorporates two long-standing observations: first, that the sedimentary record shows repetitions or cycles; and secondly, that some sedimentary units can be traced over long distances.]