Reading the Rocks The Autobiography of the Earth

by Bjornerud, Marcia

• ISBN13: 9780465006847
• ISBN10: 0465006841
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-31
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

To many of us, the Earth's crust is a relic of ancient, unknowable history. But to a geologist, stones are richly illustrated narratives, telling gothic tales of cataclysm and reincarnation. For more than four billion years, in beach sand, granite, and garnet schists, the planet has kept a rich and idiosyncratic journal of its past. Fulbright Scholar Marcia Bjornerud takes the reader along on an eye-opening tour of Deep Time, explaining in elegant prose what we see and feel beneath our feet. Both scientist and storyteller, Bjornerud uses anecdotes and metaphors to remind us that our home is a living thing with lessons to teach. Containing a glossary and detailed timescale, as well as vivid descriptions and historic accounts, Reading the Rocks is literally a history of the world, for all friends of the Earth.

Author Biography

Marcia Bjornerud is a Professor and Chair of Geology at Lawrence University. She is a Fellow of the Geographical Society of America, and was a 2000-2001 Fulbright Scholar. She lives in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Currently Accepted Geologic Timescale	xi
Prologue: Stone Crazy	1	(1)
No place with no past	1	(3)
The accidential diarist	4	(3)
The Tao of Earth	7	(18)
The Department of Redundancy Department: Inertia and spare parts	8	(3)
Equals and opposites	11	(4)
Going home to Mother Earth	15	(4)
Everything old is new again	19	(2)
The Earth fugue	21	(4)
Reading Rocks: A Primer	25	(40)
Meeting rocks on common ground	25	(4)
A rock by any other name	29	(4)
Grammar and syntax of the three rock languages	33	(15)
Mind the gap: What rocks don't tell us	48	(5)
Putting everything in order	53	(4)
Getting a date	57	(3)
Peering into the primordial mists	60	(5)
The Great and the Small	65	(34)
Geo-metry: Sizing up the Earth	66	(6)
A sense of scale	72	(5)
The importance of being erroneous	77	(2)
Making retroactive measurements	79	(5)
Tiny bubbles	84	(4)
Stretchy coastlines and imperial microbes	88	(6)
Lawmakers or outlaws?	94	(3)
Measure for measure	97	(2)
Mixing and Sorting	99	(50)
Stars of rock and heavy metal	100	(9)
Density is destiny	109	(4)
Whither the water	113	(4)
Mixed drinks and metaphors	117	(2)
The mantle of power	119	(7)
Waste management	126	(5)
Mal de mer	131	(16)
Only connect	147	(2)
Innovation and Conservation	149	(24)
You say you want a revolution	149	(1)
The paradox of oxygen	150	(5)
Coming out of the cold	155	(3)
Swimming with the (not-yet-evolved) sharks	158	(5)
An arthropod-eat-arthropod world	163	(2)
The many legs of the arms race	165	(2)
Communes and junkyards	167	(4)
Something old, something new, everything borrowed	171	(2)
Strength and Weakness	173	(20)
Earth before geology	174	(3)
Naming names and making maps	177	(4)
A mechanical Earth	181	(2)
The incredible shrinking Earth	183	(2)
Earth unbound	185	(8)
Epilogue: The Once and Future Earth	193	(6)
Glossary	199	(14)
Notes	213	(14)
Index	227