Geobiology is a rapidly growing and truly interdisciplinary field at the interface between earth and life sciences, and mainstream research in geobiology involves microbes and microbial activities at all scales in different geological environments through time in Earth’s history. This research and its findings have strong implications for the evolution of life on the Earth and potentially in other planets.

A system is an entity composed of diverse but interrelated parts that function as a whole (Kump et al., 1999a). The individual parts, often called components, interact with each other as the system evolves with time. Components include reservoirs of matter or energy, described by mass or volume, and subsystems, which behave as systems within a system. In recent years, the Earth has been considered a complex planetary system that evolved over 4.6 billion years of time. It includes reservoirs, such as the crust, mantle, and core, and subsystems, such as the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. Because many of the reservoirs in the Earth interact with each other and with subsystems, such as the atmosphere, there is an increasing tendency to consider most or all of the Earth’s reservoirs as subsystems. <...>

The earth is a dynamic planet, always changing and evolving. Its oceans and atmospheres have transformed radically since the earth was formed 4.6 billion years ago. Its crust is in constant motion, pulling continents apart and slamming them together to produce the great earthquakes and volcanoes. The core and mantle beneath are also flowing and moving, causing the changes in the crust above and in the magnetic field that shields us all from cosmic radiation.

The African continent preserves a long geological record that covers almost 75% of Earth’s history. The Pan-African orogeny (c. 600–500 Ma) brought together old continental kernels (or cratons such as West African, Congo, Kalahari and Tanzania) forming Gondwana and subsequently the supercontinent Pangea by the late Palaeozoic (Fig. 1).
The break-up of Pangea since the Jurassic and Cretaceous, primarily through the opening of the Central Atlantic (e.g. Torsvik et al. 2008; Labails et al. 2010), Indian (e.g. Gaina et al. 2007; Mu¨ller et al. 2008; Cande et al. 2010) and South Atlantic (e.g. Torsvik et al. 2009) oceans and the complicated subduction history to the north gradually shaped the African continent and its surrounding oceanic basins. Many first-order questions of African geology are still unanswered.

В монографии излагаются результаты работ, выполненных по программе Международного геодинамического проекта, устанавливаются главнейшие закономерности и связи геотектонических и магматических процессов при формировании складчатых подвижных поясов и кратонов. Разновозрастные группы подвижных поясов раннего докембрия соотносятся с крупными общемировыми геотектоническими циклами, синхронными для всех материков. Исследованы магматические комплексы вулканических, плутонических, метаморфически преображенных и реоморфизованных пород, которые индивидуализированы на вещественной химической основе и сопоставлены с фанерозойскими и современными магматическими формациями. На основе историко-геологического и петролого-геохимического аспектов исследования предложена магматическая модель развития подвижных поясов ранней Земли.

В монографии предложены новые аспекты тектонической истории дна Тихого океана и его обрамления. Выяснено большое значение в структурообразован и и процессов тектонического расслоения коры и верхней мантии. На основе корреляции тектонических движений установлена сложнейшая картина их проявления как во времени, так и в пространстве. Показана сложность латерального геодинамического взаимодействия коровых и мантийных масс в зоне перехода океан—континент. Раскрыты особенности аккреционной тектоники во всех секторах тихоокеанского обрамления. Аргументируется новая модель глубинных тектонических процессов, основанная на разноуровенном, нерегулярном во времени и разномасштабном проявлении глубинной конвекции

The guy on the other end of the phone was offering me a job! A British government funded contract to work in the Geological Survey of Sierra Leone. As a fresh graduate this was an exciting prospect – a whole unexplored Archaean craton at my feet. The next three and a half years were an exciting time. It was the early 1970s when important new discoveries were being made in Archaean rocks in South Africa and the novel ideas of plate tectonics were still being newly applied to early Earth history. My position as a survey geologist provided me with the opportunity to map several greenstone belts and what seemed like an endless tract of granite gneisses and at the same time apply these new ideas in what appeared to be virgin territory. These were ‘formative’ years which cemented my fascination with the Archaean, an absorption which has remained with me over subsequent decades. <...>

Understanding the basics of Earth’s emergence and evolution at every stage is a fundamental, almost philosophic problem comparable with the issues of the universe. On the other hand, it reflects an applied nature in substantiation of manifestation patterns of endogenous and exogenous processes affecting even the socioeconomic evolution of human society. The book begins with a brief description of Earth’s planetary evolution physical theory built based on an analysis of its energy balance. The theory is based on two source concepts. First, it is accepted that the Earth, according to O.Yu. Schmidt’s hypothesis, had emerged after homogenous accretion of a cold gas-dust proto-planetary cloud. Second, the Earth’s core is composed of an iron with its oxide alloy (on condition that the composition of the mantle and of the Earth’s crust is known). Both assumptions are currently most substantiated and accepted by most geophysicists. It turned out that these two assumptions are sufficient for constructing a self-consistent theory as they include all necessary information about the original Earth’s structure and its internal energy. Comparing based on experimental data equation of state for this matter and applying the laws of physics, it is possible to construct the theory itself. At that, the use of geological data is expedient as edge (boundary) conditions for the problem to be resolved. The young Earth’s evolution and its spinning around the axis of own revolution had substantially depended on tidal interaction of our planet with the Moon, and for this reason we had to review a model of its origin <...>

В книге члена-корр. АН СССР В.В. Белоусова рассказывается, как образовалась наша Земля, из чего она состоит, какие процессы происходят в ее глубинах и на поверхности, как возникают месторождения полезных ископаемых и какова методика геологических исследований. Используя новейшие данные в области геологии и геофизики, автор дает стройный очерк истории развития земного шара, уделяя особое внимание наиболее трудным вопросам современной науки о Земле, и намечает проблемы, подлежащие изучению в будущем.

Книга знакомит читателей с основными концепциями и гипотезами строения и развития Земли. В ней рассказывается о глубинном строении, химическом составе и фазовом состояний вещества земных недр, о строении океанического дна.

Книга предназначена для слушателей народных университетов и может быть полезна студентам и преподавателям в качестве учебного пособия