This volume is a tribute to the career of J. Brendan Murphy and features papers by over 100 authors from countries all over the world: a testament to the high-profile and far-reaching influence of Brendan’s work. The topics covered fall into three broad categories that encompass Brendan’s main fields of influence: (1) supercontinents and the supercontinent cycle, including reconstructions and modelling; (2) orogenesis and terranes, with a focus on the Appalachian–Variscan and Central Asian orogenic belts and the oceans with which they are associated; and (2) magmatism and magmatic processes, centring on the geochemistry and isotopic compositions of magmas in arc and rift setting. Like Brendan’s own research, the scope of the papers spans the globe and ranges from strongly field-based studies to conceptual analyses. All of the articles, however, are focused on unravelling some critical aspect of geology or aimed at clarifying some crucial geological process. Hence, they also share a theme common to Brendan’s many contributions in emphasizing the importance of process-oriented research.

Special Publication 503 celebrates the career of R. Damian Nance. It features 27 articles, with more than 110 authors based in 18 different countries. These articles include contributions on the processes responsible for the formation and breakup of supercontinents, the controversies concerning the status of Pannotia as a supercontinent, the generation and destruction of Paleozoic oceans, and the development of the Appalachian-Ouachitan-Caledonide-Variscan orogens. In addition to field work, the approaches to gain that understanding include examining the relationships between stratigraphy and structural geology, precise geochronology, geochemical and isotopic fingerprinting, geodynamic modelling, regional syntheses, palaeogeographic modelling, and good old-fashioned arm-waving! The wide range of topics mirrors the breadth and depth of Damian’s contributions, interests and expertise. Like Damian’s papers, the contributions range from the predominantly conceptual to detailed field work, but all are targeted at understanding important tectonic processes. Their scope not only varies in scale from global to regional to local, but also in the range of approaches required to gain that understanding.

The integration of Tectonics/Geochemistry, up-to-date reviews by leading scientists as well as a broad topical coverage of the Archean, are some of the features of this particular volume. As geochronology has progressed in the last 20 years, the Archean has continued to attract interest. Advancements in the understanding of Archean crustal and mantle evolution have progressed rapidly since the first International Archean Symposium in Western Australia (1970). The landmark for the Archean was the NATO Advanced Study Institute at Leicester (1975). At this meeting the Archean truly "came of age". Investigators from many different disciplines focused their expertise on the early history of the earth. For the first time, the nature of the atmosphere, oceans, and life during the Archean was an important part of an Archean symposium. During the most recent Archean Symposium in Perth in 1990, there was a shift in interest from field and trace element data to the new rapidly evolving high-precision U/Pb geochronology of Archean rocks and to detailed structural studies of both low and high grade Archean terrains. The terrane concept so widely applied to the Phanerozoic was proposed for the Archean Yilgarn Province in Western Australia and is now widely accepted for the Archean (as evident by the articles in this book). Plate tectonics is now widely accepted as the principal process that controls the history of continents and oceans. There are, though, well substantiated differences between Archean and post-Archean rocks that indicate that Archean tectonic regimes must have differed in some respects from modern ones. The question of how and to what degree did Archean plate tectonics differ from modern plate tectonics is treated in many of the chapters of this book. Altogether, the editor has presented a selection of articles that provide a fascinating insight into the latest observations in this field.

Microbial carbonates (microbialites) are remarkable sedimentary deposits because they have the longest geological range of any type of biogenic limestones, they form in the greatest range of different sedimentary environments, they oxygenated the Earth’s atmosphere, and they produce and store large volumes of hydrocarbons. This Special Publication provides significant contributions at a pivotal time in our understanding of microbial carbonates, when their economic importance has become established and the results of many research programmes are coming to fruition. It is the first book to focus on the economic aspects of microbialites and in particular the giant pre-salt discoveries offshore Brazil. In addition it contains papers on the processes involved in formation of both modern and ancient microbialites and the diversity of style in microbial carbonate buildups, structures and fabrics in both marine and non-marine settings and throughout the geological record.

Surveys the origin of continents, and the accretion and breakup of supercontinents through earth history. This book also shows how these processes affected the composition of seawater, climate, and the evolution of life.

A comprehensible reference manual for palaeontologists on many aspects of their science. Topics discussed range from the esoteric, such as palaeoecology and preservation, to the practical, such as the storing of specimens and photography.

Granitoids form the bulk of the Archean continental crust and preserve key information on early Earth evolution. India hosts five main Archean cratonic blocks (Aravalli, Bundelkhand, Singhbhum, Bastar and Dharwar). This book summarizes the available information on Archean granitoids of Indian cratons. The chapters cover a broad spectrum of themes related to granitoid typology, emplacement mechanism, petrogenesis, phase-equilibria modelling, temporal distribution, tectonic setting, and their roles in fluid evolution, metal delivery and mineralizations. The book presents a broader picture incorporating regional- to craton-scale comparisons, implications for Archean geodynamic processes, and temporal changes thereof. This synthesis work, integrating modern concepts on granite petrology and crustal evolution, offers an irreplaceable body of reference information for any geologist interested in Archaean Indian granitoids.

To this day, there is a great amount of controversy about where, when and how the so-called supercontinents--Pangea, Godwana, Rodinia, and Columbia--were made and broken. Continents and Supercontinents frames that controversy by giving all the necessary background on how continental crust is formed, modified, and destroyed, and what forces move plates. It also discusses how these processes affect the composition of seawater, climate, and the evolution of life. Rogers and Santosh begin with a survey of plate tectonics, and go on to describe the composition, production, and destruction of continental and oceanic crust, and show that cratons or assemblies of cratons became the first true continents, approximately one billion years after the earliest continental crust evolved. The middle part of the book concentrates on supercontinents, beginning with a discussion of types of orogenic belts, distinguishing those that formed by closure of an ocean basin within the belt and those that formed by intracontinental deformation caused by stresses generated elsewhere. This information permits discrimination between models of supercontinent formation by accretion of numerous small terranes and by reorganization of large old continental blocks. This background leads to a description of the assembly and fragmentation of supercontinents throughout earth history. The record is most difficult to interpret for the oldest supercontinent, Columbia, and also controversial for Rodinia, the next youngest supercontinent. The configurations and pattern of breakup of Gondwana and Pangea are well known, but some aspects of their assembly are unclear. The book also briefly describes the histories of continents after the breakup of Pangea, and discusses how changes in the composition of seawater, climate, and life may have been affected by the sizes and locations of continents and supercontinents.

Ancient Supercontinents and the Paleogeography of Earth offers a systematic examination of Precambrian cratons and supercontinents. Through detailed maps of drift histories and paleogeography of each continent, this book examines topics related to Earth's tectonic evolution prior to Pangea, including plate kinematics, orogenic development, and paleoenvironments. Additionally, this book discusses the methodologies used, principally paleomagnetism and tectonostratigraphy, and addresses geophysical topics of mantle dynamics and geodynamo evolution over billions of years. Structured clearly with consistent coverage for Precambrian cratons, this book combines state-of-the-art paleomagnetic and geochronologic data to reconstruct the paleogeography of the Earth in the context of major climatic events such as global glaciations. It is an ideal, up-to-date reference for geoscientists and geographers looking for answers to questions surrounding the tectonic evolution of Earth. - Provides robust paleogeographies of Precambrian cratons based on high-quality paleomagnetic and geochronologic data and critically tested by global geological datasets - Includes links to updated databases for the Precambrian such as PALEOMAGIA and the Global Paleomagnetic Database (GPMDB) - Presents full-color maps of the drift histories of each continent as well as their paleogeographies - Discusses key questions regarding continental drift, the supercontinent cycle, and the geomagnetic dipole hypothesis and analyzes palaeography in the context of Earth's holistic evolution

Worldwide, Neoproterozoic successions are major hydrocarbon producers. In North Africa, large basins with significant surface outcrops and thick sedimen-tary fills are widespread. These basins are now emerging as potential sources of hydrocarbons and are attracting interest both from geological researchers and the oil and gas industry. This volume focuses on recent developments in the understanding and correla-tion of North African basin fills and explores novel approaches to prospecting for source and reservoir rocks. The papers cover aspects of petroleum prospectivity and age-equivalent global petroleum systems, Neoproterozoic tectonics and pa-laeogeography, sequence stratigraphy, glacial events and global climatic models, faunal and floral evolution and the deposition of early source rocks. The broader aim is to compare with, and learn from, well-studied Neoproterozoic successions globally, including major environmental change, the emergence of life, the global carbon cycle and implications for hydrocarbon exploration.