When in 1981 Louis and Walter Alvarez, the father and son team, unearthed a tell-tale Iridium-rich sedimentary horizon at the 65 million years-old Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary at Gubbio, Italy, their find heralded a paradigm shift in the study of terrestrial evolution. Since the 1980s the discovery and study of asteroid impact ejecta in the oldest well-preserved terrains of Western Australia and South Africa, by Don Lowe, Gary Byerly, Bruce Simonson, Scott Hassler, the author and others, and the documentation of new exposed and buried impact structures in several continents, have led to a...

Archaean terrains contain a wealth of structural, stratigraphic, textural, mineralogical, geochemical and isotopic features allowing insights into the nature of the early Earth. This book is based on studies during 1964-2007 of Archaean terrains in Australia and to a lesser extent in South Africa and India, as well as on visits to Archaean terrains in Canada, the US and China, as well as petrological and geochemical studies of igneous and sedimentary rock suites from a range of terrains. The book will include a range of photographic and microscopic images, geological sketch maps and...

This book presents projections and blueprints of the future geologic period, climate and biosphere, based on our current understanding of the Earth's history and recent developments in the atmosphere-ocean-cryosphere system.

By the second decade of the 21st century it has become clear that, rather than channel its efforts into protecting its planetary biosphere and living species, Homo sapiens continues to sink its remaining resources into weapons, including nuclear missiles - thus increasing the risk of intentional or accidental spread of radioactive nuclides on land,...