Beschreibung:
Octavian Catuneanu is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta, with PhD degrees from the University of Toronto and the University of Bucharest. He is the recipient of several distinctions in the field of Geology, including the W.W. Hutchison Medal of the Geological Association of Canada for exceptional advances in earth science research, and best paper awards from the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers, the Geological Society of America, and the Romanian Academy of Sciences. Octavian Catuneanu served as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal of Marine and Petroleum Geology, Chair of the Task Group on Sequence Stratigraphy of the International Subcommission on Stratigraphic Classification, Chair of the North American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature, and member of the editorial board of several journals in North America, Europe, and Africa. He is the editor of several books and special issues, author of numerous publications in the fields of sedimentology, stratigraphy, and basin analysis, and instructor of sequence stratigraphy and related disciplines for universities, conferences, and companies worldwide. The first edition of his "Principles of Sequence Stratigraphy textbook (Elsevier, 2006) received the 2007 "Outstanding Academic Title Choice Award from the American Library Association and remains a best-selling title.
In this book the editors strive to cover all primary (i.e. non-applied) topics in Precambrian geology in a non-partisan way, by using a large team of international authors to present their datasets and highly divergent viewpoints.
The chapters address: celestial origins of Earth and succeeding extraterrestrial impact events; generation of continental crust and the greenstone-granite debate; the interaction of mantle plumes and plate tectonics over Precambrian time; Precambrian volcanism, emphasising komatiite research; evolution and models for Earth's hydrosphere and atmosphere; evolution of life and its influence on Precambrian ocean chemistry and chemical sedimentation; sedimentation through Precambrian time; the application of sequence stratigraphy to the Precambrian rock record. Each topic is introduced and a non-partisan closing commentary provided at the end of each chapter. The final chapter blends the major geological events and rates at which important processes occurred into a synthesis, which postulates a number of "event clusters" in the Precambrian when significant changes occurred in many natural systems and geological environments.
Also available in paperback, ISBN: 0-444-51509-7
1. The Early Earth.
2. Generation of Continental Crust.
3. Tectonism and Mantle Plumes through Time.
4. Precambrian Volcanism: an independent Variable through Time.
5. Evolution of the Hydrosphere and Atmosphere.
6. Evolution of Life and Precambrian Bio-Geology.
7. Sedimentation through Time.
8. Sequence Stratigraphy and the Precambrian.
9. Synthesis.
