Historical Geology (Bentley et al.)
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This textbook is intended for undergraduate courses in Earth history. It was written by Callan Bentley, Karen Layou, Russ Kohrs, Shelley Jaye, Matt Affolter, and Brian Ricketts. It is a work in progress.
Front Matter
1: What is Historical Geology?
2: A Brief History of Earth
3: Earth as a System
4: Earth Materials - The Rock Forming Minerals
5: Earth Materials - Rocks
6: Plate Tectonics
7: Geologic Time
8: Evolution Part I - The Theory
9: Taphonomy - The Science of Death and Decay
10: Innovations of Life Through Time - Life Finds a Way
11: Mass Extinctions
12: Stratigraphy - The Pages of Earth's Past
13: Using Sedimentary Structures to Interpret Ancient Environments
14: Facies
15: Paleoclimatology
16: (Case Study) Nebular theory and the formation of the solar system
17: (Case Study) Earth's oldest rocks
18: (Case Study) Greenstone belts - primordial tectonics
19: (Case Study) Starting tectonics and making the first continents
20: (Case Study) Snowball Earth glaciations
21: (Case Study) Endosymbiosis
22: (Case Study) Discovering plate tectonics
23: (Case Study) The Grenville Orogeny and the rifting of Rodinia
24: (Case Study) Tippecanoe Sequence - A sequence stratigraphic view
25: (Case Study) The Taconian Orogeny
26: (Case Study) California’s Coast Ranges - a Mesozoic accretionary wedge complex
27: (Case Study) The mixed-up quartzites of Cape Agulhas
28: (Case Study) Palimpsest outcrops
29: (Case Study) Extremadura - interpreting a geological cross-section
30: (Case Study) Diversity in the marine fossil record
31: (Case Study) Reptile radiation
32: (Case Study) Dinosaur classification
33: (Case Study) Dino Debates - dinosaur ecological controversies
34: (Case Study) Western Mesozoic orogenies
35: (Case Study) San Andreas Fault and the Basin and Range
36: (Case Study) The Parallel "Roads" of Glen Roy
37: (Case Study) The Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington
38: (Case Study) The interplay of carbon and oxygen cycles in Earth history
39: (Case Study) Quaternary Quandaries - defining the geologic "now" and explorations of the Anthropocene
40: (Case Study) Human Evolution
41: (Case Study) Big Bang (coming soon)
42: (Case Study) Crust formation and evolution and differentiation (coming soon)
43: (Case Study) Moon forming impact (coming soon)
44: (Case Study) Ocean formation and evolution (coming soon)
45: (Case Study) Atmosphere formation and evolution, oxygenation (coming soon)
46: (Case Study) Origin of life (coming soon)
47: (Case Study) A history of fossil plants (coming soon)
48: (Case Study) Sauk/early Paleozoic transgression (coming soon)
49: (Case Study) The Acadian Orogeny (coming soon)
50: (Case Study) The Alleghanian Orogeny (coming soon)
51: (Case Study) Large igneous provinces / Flood basalts (coming soon)
52: (Case Study) Pleistocene "Ice Ages" (coming soon)
53: (Case Study) Epicontinental seas - Pz, Mz, Cz (coming soon)
54: (Case Study) Carboniferous coal and natural gas - cyclothems (coming soon)
55: (Case Study) PETM (coming soon)
56: (Tools of the Trade) Earth Materials - Mineral identification
57: (Tools of the Trade) Evolution Part II - Paleontological applications
58: (Tools of the Trade) Sequence stratigraphy
59: (Tools of the Trade) Geologic structures
60: (Tools of the Trade) Geologic maps
61: (Tools of the Trade) Way-up structures
62: Virtual Field Experiences (VFEs)
63: Visual Sample Sets (VSSs)
Back Matter
Thumbnail: Proposed map of pangaea. (CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported; via Wikipedia)