Bøger i Geology Underfoot serien

The transition from the relatively flat Great Plains to the craggy peaks of Colorado's Front Range is one of North America's most abrupt topographical contrasts. The epic, 1,800-million-year geologic story behind this amazing landscape is even more awe inspiring. In Geology Underfoot along Colorado's Front Range, the most recent addition to the Geology Underfoot series, authors (and geoscientists) Lon Abbott and Terri Cook narrate the Front Range's tale, from its humble beginnings as a flat, nondescript seafloor through several ghostly incarnations as a towering mountain range. The book's 21 chapters, or vignettes, lead you to easily accessible stops along the Front Range's highways and byways, where you'll meet the apatosaur and other dinosaurs who roamed the floodplains and beaches that once covered the Front Range; look for diamonds in rare, out-of-the-way volcanic pipes; learn how America's mountain, Pikes Peak, developed from molten magma miles below the surface only to become an important visual landmark for early Great Plains' travelers; and walk the Gangplank, a singularly important plateau for both nineteenth-century westward expansion and our understanding of the Front Range's most recent exhumation. A healthy dose of full-color illustrations and photos demystify the concepts put forth in the authors' elegant, insightful prose. With Geology Underfoot along Colorado's Front Range in hand, you'll feel like you're traveling through time as you explore the Front Range's hidden geologic treasures.

Rocks racing across a lakebed in Death Valley. Perfectly preserved 36-million-year-old tsetse flies in Colorado. Dinosaur trackways cemented into ancient floodplains in Connecticut. A gaping rift in the Idaho desert. What do these enigmatic geologic phenomena have in common? Besides initiating a profusion of head-scratching over the years, these sites of geologic wonder appear side by side, for the first time, in a single publication. Examining in detail at least one amazing site for all fifty states, Albert Dickas clearly explains the geologic forces behind each one's origin in 101 Geologic Sites You've Gotta See. Dickas discusses not only iconic landforms such as Devil's Tower in Wyoming but also locales that are often overlooked yet have fascinating stories. Consider the Reelfoot scarp in Tennessee: to the casual observer it is nothing more than a slight rise in a farm field. Yet this subtle slope represents a rift formed during an 1812 earthquake that forced the mighty Mississippi to flow upstream. Or Lousiana's unassuming, low-lying Avery Island, which actually caps an 8.5-mile-high column of salt. Amply illustrated with full-color photographs and illustrations and written in clear yet playful prose, 101 Geologic Sites You've Gotta See will entertain and inform amateur and seasoned geology buffs whether from an armchair or in the field.

Southern Idaho is a geologic jackpot. Etched in its rugged mountains, incredibly young lava fields, and steep-walled canyons lie compelling evidence of amazing geologic events, including breccia from one of the largest meteorite impacts in the world. Join geology professor and author Shawn Willsey as he uses clear prose, concise illustrations, and dramatic photographs to tell the stories of 23 amazing geologic sites. Learn how Ice Age floods carved the Snake River Canyon, how tree molds and lava tubes formed at Craters of the Moon, why 200 individuals of Idaho�s state fossil�the Hagerman Horse�died and were preserved in one place, and where the land surface ruptured during the 1983 Borah Peak earthquake.

Standing before any of southern Utah's enigmatic landforms, it's clear, there's a story here. This reference explores the stories behind 33 sites, some world-famous, others off the beaten path. Includes 146 black-and-white photographs, 31 maps, 37 black-and-white figures, bibliography, glossary, and index.