К лампрофирам, после открытия Гумбелем (1874), в течение целого столетия относились как к непонятным редкостям. Несмотря на то, что эта ситуация, с ростом количества публикаций и активности работающих в этом направлении, в последнее время изменилась, лампрофиры остаются едва ли не единственной группой изверженных пород, которой еще не посвящена отдельная монография.

This is a course book – meaning that it intends to confer not knowledge, but skill. The need for this skill becomes obvious if we look at the changing role of trace fossils during the last decades. From objects that were treated in standard paleontology textbooks, at best, under “Miscellanea”, together with problematica, coprolites and pseudofossils useless as index fossils, they have become subject of a special field, paleoichnology.

Rocks that form the outer part of the Earth, the crust, provide a record of constant change in the Earth’s environment with time in relation to the movement and/or reaction of rock material during their formation. Thus, understanding the genesis of rocks is the foundation of the geological knowledge system. The nature, size, shape, properties and arrangement of constituent minerals gives rise to the diversity of rocks and their origin so that the challenge of geology is in determining their material source and mechanism of formation. Among the three kinds of rocks, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic, the material source of metamorphic rocks need not be considered because its predecessor is also rock. Igneous rocks derived by crystallisation of liquids can be divided into mafic and felsic end members represented by gabbro/basalt and granite/rhyolite, respectively, with different sources <...>

The idea of this brief chapter is to introduce students to the concept of fossil occurrences and their use, through geological time. An approach that defines the geological time scale, a method of relating the timing and relationship between events that have occurred during Earth’s history. The Geologic time is divisible into four Eons, Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic (Fig. 1.1). The Eons are further divided into Eras; the Phanerozoic is divided into Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic (Fig. 1.1). The Eras are based on major changes in fossils record (such as extinction and origination; the latter is the appearance of new forms). The Eras are further divided into smaller units called Periods, in which a single type of rock system is formed; these are further divided into Epochs like the Paleogene is divisible into Paleocene, Eocene, and Oligocene (Fig. 1.1). However, in spite of a long impressive fossil record, it is also interrupted by major and minor extinction events (Fig. 1.1; see also Hart 1996; Hallam and Wignall 1997; Koeberl and MacLeod 2002; Taylor 2009). The Phanerozoic record of marine invertebrates, in particular, is interrupted by numerous, geologically short-term intervals (generally <3 Ma) during which biotic diversity and abundance declined significantly (<40 % at the familial level and <63 % at the generic level) (Raup and Sepkoski 1986) (see Fig. 1.1). Extinctions (major and minor) do not fall within the preview of this book but have only been mentioned to allude to the interruptions within the fossil record. <...>

I discovered the existence of the Ankarana in 1981 when I was a geology student at Nice University attending the lessons of Prof. Julian, a famous French karstologist, along with three comrades who were also cavers. One day he showed us a map from a book based on work that had been carried out in the north of Madagascar: The Ankarana Plateau by Georges Rossi (1980). At first glance we were fascinated by the landscape represented on the map. Reading the book, an important part of which was devoted to the karst areas of Red Island (Madagascar), was the incentive we needed for us to put on on our cavers’ boots and explore such a remote area. <...>

Surface waters play an important role in relief formation by creating a multitude of landforms which depend genetically and evolutionally on the prevailing geomorphic processes and on the area’s geology. Underground waters, in turn, form a series of underground landforms and deposits which depend on geomorphic processes different from those prevailing on the surface.

A moderately comprehensive reference handbook covering the most important paleontological taxa, terms, concepts, and localities, this book is written primarily for general readers and beginning students in the field. My professional experience lies in technical writing and in teaching literature and history, with a lifelong interest in paleontology inspired by Professor Charles Higgins at UC Davis and by studying the geology collection in UC Berkeley’s beautiful Bacon Hall before it was demolished in 1961. Using the essays of science writers like Loren Eiseley, Stephen Gould, and E.O. Wilson in my composition classes in the 1980s, I made critical thinking and the evolution of life on Earth the center of my teaching. An interesting technical writing project in the early 1990s showed me the lack of a dictionary like this, and I began the groundwork for a good reference work as I directed student research in the history of life in my writing courses. Retiring from teaching in 2014, I have widened my understanding of paleontology with intensive study in the last 5 years. <...>

Plate tectonics focuses on the dynamics and kinematics of the most external layers of the solid Earth: the relatively thin oceanic crust (7–10 km thickness), the continental crust (5–70 km thickness), the mantle lithosphere, whose lower boundary can be found at depths ranging between 80 and 250 km, the underlying asthenosphere (up to 410 km depth), the transition zone (410–670 km depth), and the very huge lower mantle, which extends to a depth of 2,900 km (Fig. 1.1). All these rock layers are formed by solid-state mixtures of minerals that are chemically and structurally stable only within determined intervals of pressure and temperature. Rocks can eventually contain liquid phases in the existing pores between grains or in cracks.

Do we actually understand geologic processes? New technology brings new information and perceptions, which sometimes overturn imaginations based on simple observation and estimation, in conjunction with common sense inference. In 1902– 1904, Pierre Curie and Ernest Rutherford first formulated the idea of using radioactive transformation of nuclides as a geologic chronometer. After a century of working with such tools, geology has advanced from a descriptive science to an analytic science that formulates conclusions based on exact values. The technology of radiogenic isotope geology has created a branch of science that considers the Earth as a planet generated within a Solar system and studies the subsequent evolution of geologic processes that has resulted in the present formation of our planet’s continents and oceans.<...>

Granite petrology has achieved significant progress since Tuttle and Bowen (1958) wrote the monograph on the Origin of granite in the light of experimental studies in the system NaAISi308-KAISi308-SiOrH20. Since then, the components CaAI2Si20 s, FeO, MgO, and excess alumina have been added to the pure system Ab-Or-Qz-H20 in order to include plagioclase and common mafic minerals in the investigations.