New views on an old planet
I've spent the last couple of weeks on a four billion year journey: Tjeerd H. van Andel's "New views on an old planet: A history of global change". It was written as a textbook for undergraduates who didn't intend to become geologists, so aims to be jargon-free and no more technical than necessary. And mostly, it's a good and fascinating read.
It addressed, though not always answered, questions I'd had in the back of my mind: what came before Pangaea? What's this Permian extinction I keep hearing about? Where did all the coal come from? Are we in a glacial or an interglacial. And asked questions I hadn't thought of: what were the oceans like in different eras? How did the continents get there, and why's plate tectonics so messy around the edges?
I now have a bit more chance of remembering that the Paleozoic Era came before the Triassic Period, which was before the Oligocene Epoch, and that they're all part of the Phanerozoic Eon. That should come in handy at future quiz nights. Though flicking through it again before handing it back to the library, I can see I've forgotten vast chunks of it in the three weeks since I finished. A good book to have on my bookshelf. Maybe the third edition.
It addressed, though not always answered, questions I'd had in the back of my mind: what came before Pangaea? What's this Permian extinction I keep hearing about? Where did all the coal come from? Are we in a glacial or an interglacial. And asked questions I hadn't thought of: what were the oceans like in different eras? How did the continents get there, and why's plate tectonics so messy around the edges?
I now have a bit more chance of remembering that the Paleozoic Era came before the Triassic Period, which was before the Oligocene Epoch, and that they're all part of the Phanerozoic Eon. That should come in handy at future quiz nights. Though flicking through it again before handing it back to the library, I can see I've forgotten vast chunks of it in the three weeks since I finished. A good book to have on my bookshelf. Maybe the third edition.