This title explores the underground caves, sinkholes and underground rivers of Jamaica.

This book offers exchanges between the fields of paleontology and zoology as patterns of biodiversity have long attracted the attention of both biologists and paleontologists. It covers the development of isolated island faunas, paleogeography and zoomorphology. The book shows that patterns are not always what they seem if looked at without a spatial or temporal reference.

The birth of the Caribbean Geological Conference in 1955 was a landmark in the search for geoscientific knowledge in the region. The proceedings of this conference continue to uncover many aspects of the Caribbean that remain virtually untouched and address questions that remain unanswered. This volume reports the most recent research on Caribbean geology, presented at the Fifteenth Caribbean Geological Conference held in 1998. The 24 research papers shed new light in the areas of plate tectonics, structural geology, metamorphic and igneous petrology, paleontology, biostratigraphy, economic geology, geochemistry, mineralogy, geologic hazards and geoscience education.

This 21-chapter volume provides a regionally-comprehensive collection of original studies of Caribbean basins conducted by academic and petroleum geologists and geophysicists in the early and mid-1990s. The common tectonic events discussed in the volume including the rifting and passive margin history of North and South America that led to the formation of the Caribbean region; the entry of an exotic, Pacific-derived Great Arc of the Caribbean at the leading edge of the Caribbean oceanic plateau; the terminal collision of the arc and plateau with the passive margins fringing North and South America; and subsequent strike-slip and accretionary tectonics that affected the arc-continent collision zone.Two introductory chapters (Part A) utilize recent advances in quantitative plate tectonic modeling and satellite-based gravity measurements to place the main phases of Caribbean basin formation into a global plate tectonic framework. Nineteen subsequent chapters are organized geographically and focus on individual or groups of genetically-linked basins. Part B consists of five chapters which mainly focus on basins overlying the North America plate in the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba and the Bahamas that record its rifting from South America in late Jurassic to Cretaceous time. Part C has six chapters that focus on smaller, usually heavily faulted and onshore Cenozoic basins of the northern Caribbean that formed in response to arc collisional and strike-slip activity along the evolving North America-Caribbean plate boundary. The two chapters in Part D focus on Cenozoic basins related to the Lesser Antilles arc system of the eastern Caribbean. Part E is comprised of three chapters on the Jurassic-Recent sedimentary basins of the eastern Venezuela and Trinidad area of the southeastern Caribbean. These basins reflect both the Jurassic-Cretaceous rifting and passive margin history of separation between the North and South America plates as well as a much younger phase of Oligocene to recent transpression between the eastward migrating Lesser Antilles arc and accretionary wedge and the South America continent. The three chapters of Part F contain deep penetration seismic reflection and other geophysical data on the largely submarine Cretaceous Caribbean oceanic plateau that forms the nucleus of the present-day Caribbean plate.

The Geologic Time Scale 2012, winner of a 2012 PROSE Award Honorable Mention for Best Multi-volume Reference in Science from the Association of American Publishers, is the framework for deciphering the history of our planet Earth. The authors have been at the forefront of chronostratigraphic research and initiatives to create an international geologic time scale for many years, and the charts in this book present the most up-to-date, international standard, as ratified by the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the International Union of Geological Sciences. This 2012 geologic time scale is an enhanced, improved and expanded version of the GTS2004, including chapters on planetary scales, the Cryogenian-Ediacaran periods/systems, a prehistory scale of human development, a survey of sequence stratigraphy, and an extensive compilation of stable-isotope chemostratigraphy. This book is an essential reference for all geoscientists, including researchers, students, and petroleum and mining professionals. The presentation is non-technical and illustrated with numerous colour charts, maps and photographs. The book also includes a detachable wall chart of the complete time scale for use as a handy reference in the office, laboratory or field. - The most detailed international geologic time scale available that contextualizes information in one single reference for quick desktop access - Gives insights in the construction, strengths, and limitations of the geological time scale that greatly enhances its function and its utility - Aids understanding by combining with the mathematical and statistical methods to scaled composites of global succession of events - Meets the needs of a range of users at various points in the workflow (researchers extracting linear time from rock records, students recognizing the geologic stage by their content)