Fossils are cool. Fossils are amazing. This book is about the incredible stories fossils tell us, and the staggering insights they give us into the history of the earth and the evolution of life. I hope you find this quick tour through the world of fossils both informative and enjoyable.

The initial concept of a photographic atlas on fault rocks was developed  during informal discussions at the Geological Society of America Penrose  Conference "Significance and Petrogenesis of Mylonitic Rocks" held at San  Diego, California, in spring 1981, and coconvened by the editors of this  book. Many participants felt that a new consensus about mylonites and ductile shear zones had been achieved at the conference, based largely upon the  contributions of geoscientists who brought perspectives from the laboratory  as well as from the field. In part motivated by the publication (1982) of the  Atlas of Deformational and Metamorphic Rock Fabrics (and its predecessor,  the Atlas of Rock Cleavage) both edited by G. J. Borradaile, Μ. B. Bayly, and  C. McA. Powell, we felt that a collection of photographs of features characteristic of faults and shear zones, ranging in scale from mesoscopic to microscopic to even submicroscopic, together with carefully documented locations  and regional (or experimental) information, would provide a valuable reference as well as a teaching device <...>

In October 1975 a Short Course on Feldspar Mineralogy was held at the Hotel Utah, Salt Lake City, in conjunction with the annual meetings of the Mineralogical Society of America. Richard A. Yund, David B. Stewart, Joseph V. Smith and Paul H. Ribbe presented workshops on x-ray single-crystal and powder diffraction methods and electron optical techniques as applied to the study of feldspars and presented eight lectures, the substance of which became the nine chapters of the first edition of Feldspar Mineralogy. That book was published by the Mineralogical Society as the second volume of its series entitled "Short Course Notes". <...>

Although there are many different geophysical methods, small-scale surveys all tend to be rather alike and involve similar, and sometimes ambiguous, jargon. For example, the word base has three different common meanings, and stacked and field have two each.
Measurements in geophysical surveys are made in the field but, unfortunately, many are also of fields. Field theory is fundamental to gravity, magnetic and electromagnetic work, and even particle fluxes and seismic wavefronts can be described in terms of radiation fields. Sometimes ambiguity is unimportant, and sometimes both meanings are appropriate (and intended), but there are occasions when it is necessary to make clear distinctions.