The planet we live on: The beginnings of the Earth Sciences

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Amazon rain forests. This is also why new trees are being planted in many parts of theworld, sometimes as part of ‘carbon trading’ where an organisation might plant newtrees to offset its energy consumption from fossil fuels.<strong>The</strong>re are also major global attempts to reduce fuel consumption: by making engines, largeand small, more efficient; by developing more efficient industrial processes; by reducingheat losses from older buildings; and by constructing new buildings that are more energyefficient.In these ways, organisations and individuals are trying to ‘reduce their carbonfootprint’.<strong>The</strong> new technology of removing carbon dioxide generated by burning fossil fuels andpumping it into abandoned oil and gas fields is still experimental. This is called ‘carbonsequestration’ or ‘carbon capture’ and is part of the ‘clean coal technology’ beingdiscussed as a method of using coal to produce energy without polluting the environmentand adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. If this does become successful it is likelyto be many years before it is available for large scale use.For all the reasons described above, many countries are currently considering the ‘nuclearoption’ as a way of supplying substantial amounts of po<strong>we</strong>r, and so reducing theconsumption of fossil fuels, while other methods of po<strong>we</strong>r generation are being developed.See the ‘Po<strong>we</strong>r through the window’ ‘thought experiment’ activity at http://www.earthlearningidea.com to think about how energy production might affect your localenvironment.5.3 Great fossil finds<strong>The</strong> media often report important fossil finds, but these are only really ‘great fossil finds’if they provide new evidence for life on Earth in the past. Such finds normally fall intofour categories:• exceptional preservation - the unusual circumstances where groups of fossils are so<strong>we</strong>ll preserved that their soft parts and living relationships can be studied;• ‘missing link’ fossils - which show how some groups of organisms are linked to others;• complex fossil skeletons - which, when re-assembled, show the mode of life of individualanimals;• hominid finds - the rare finds that help us to investigate human evolution.One of the most famous examples of exceptional preservation is the Burgess Shale foundhigh in the Rocky Mountains in Canada. Here, during Cambrian times (about 500 millionyears ago), organisms that <strong>live</strong>d in a shallow sea <strong>we</strong>re s<strong>we</strong>pt off the edge of an underseacliff, probably during storms, and <strong>we</strong>re preserved in mud at the foot of the cliff. Not onlywas the preservation exceptional, in that the finest details of the soft parts of the animalsare often preserved, but also a wide variety of animals has been found, many completelyunlike animals found on Earth today (see Figure 5.20). Evolutionary scientists have hotly125
Figure 5.19: A beautifully preserved Archaeopteryx fossil, with a model in the foreground.126
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Basic Books in ScienceBook 6<strong
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BASIC BOOKS IN SCIENCE- a Series of
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BASIC BOOKS IN SCIENCE- a Series of
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Looking ahead - If you came across
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3.2 Plate tectonics (20th Century)
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1.30 Coal seams in an opencast coal
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3.4 Alfred Wegener, the polar explo
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5.14 A GPS remote volcano monitorin
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Figure 1.2:minerals.A sandstone roc
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Even diamond can have different col
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Figure 1.8: A red garnet crystal in
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Figure 1.12: Crystals of minerals i
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Hematite, Fe 2 O 3 - earthy red, me
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Figure 1.17: Sedimentary rocks show
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Figure 1.20: A close up view of a p
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Figure 1.26: Ancient wave ripple ma
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Figure 1.30: Coal seams in an openc
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Figure 1.32: Close up view of a pie
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Figure 1.35: A fossil colonial cora
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Figure 1.38: Fossil ammonites, indi
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Figure 1.39: ‘Massive’ igneous
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Figure 1.41: A close up view of a p
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Figure 1.44: A basalt flow that coo
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Figure 1.47: Deposit of volcanic as
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Figure 1.49: An old slate quarry, s
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Figure 1.51: Slate, a low-grade met
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Figure 1.53: Schist, a medium-grade
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Figure 1.56: Metaquartzite, produce
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Figure 1.58: A region of folded roc
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Figure 1.61: A normal fault. This s
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Figure 1.64: An unconformity. Older
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proper geological maps. Fossils hav
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Cephalopods are not extinct, but th
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Figure 1.68: A shelled cephalopod f
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You can try the rock sequencing pri
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Chapter 2Reading landscapes: how la
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Figure 2.3: Rock fragments loosened
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Figure 2.6: The jo
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Figure 2.10: The m
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are forming them. Similarly the sha
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Figure 2.19: This photo was taken f
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Figure 2.25: Dinosaur tracks conser
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• On coastal sections, whenever p
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found evidence that the Earth was a
Page 89 and 90: Figure 3.3: James Hutton, the ‘Fo
Page 91 and 92: Figure 3.5: A page of Wegener’s 1
Page 93 and 94: Figure 3.7: The st
Page 95 and 96: Figure 3.10: The r
Page 97 and 98: Figure 3.13: The m
Page 99 and 100: Figure 3.15: The S
Page 101 and 102: Figure 3.19: An ocean versus contin
Page 103 and 104: Figure 3.23: Map of the major tecto
Page 105 and 106: Figure 3.26: Global temperature cha
Page 107 and 108: Figure 3.29: A computer generated p
Page 109 and 110: Figure 3.31: The
Page 111 and 112: planet extended th
Page 113 and 114: Figure 4.1: William Smith’s geolo
Page 115 and 116: Millionsof yearsago (Ma)01000Some M
Page 117 and 118: ocks whilst the first definite plan
Page 119 and 120: Figure 4.9: The ch
Page 121 and 122: Figure 4.12: The 4
Page 123 and 124: Millionsof years Some Major Earth E
Page 125 and 126: Figure 5.2: Strike-slip movement (r
Page 127 and 128: Figure 5.4: The So
Page 129 and 130: Figure 5.6: An ash eruption rising
Page 131 and 132: Figure 5.10: A hazard zone map of t
Page 133 and 134: isk to humans. The
Page 135 and 136: Figure 5.14: A GPS (global satellit
Page 137 and 138: None of these methods has yet prove
Page 139: Figure 5.17: A windfarm in Ireland.
Page 143 and 144: Another ‘missing link’ find has
Page 145 and 146: Figure 5.22: A dinosaur reconstruct
Page 147 and 148: Figure 5.25: A working aggregate-pr
Page 149 and 150: Figure 5.26: The E
Page 151 and 152: Chapter 6Understanding what geologi
Page 153 and 154: Figure 6.2: A drilling rig used for
Page 155 and 156: When an oil/gas field has been foun
Page 157 and 158: Figure 6.6: Groundwater flowing out
Page 159 and 160: Dam disaster in Italy, when the wav
Page 161 and 162: Figure 6.10: A slab foundation, bui
Page 163 and 164: An example of this is investigation
Page 165 and 166: GlossaryAbsolute age The</s
Page 167 and 168: Carbon capture The
Page 169 and 170: Crustal shortening This results of
Page 171 and 172: Evaporite deposits (or evaporites)
Page 173 and 174: Geophysical survey Using the method
Page 175 and 176: “Integrated waste management” <
Page 177 and 178: Metamorphism The r
Page 179 and 180: Pore spaces (or pores) Gaps bet<str
Page 181 and 182: Saltation Sediment movement by flui
Page 183 and 184: Suspension Sediment movement by flu
Page 185 and 186: AcknowledgementsPermission to repri
Page 187 and 188: Figure 2.3 A scree slope. Photo ID:
Page 189 and 190: Figure 1.15a Hematite.Figure 1.15b
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Figure 1.28 Dune cross bedding in s
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Figure 3.18 An island arc volcano,
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Figure 5.21 Excavations at the dino
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The planet we live on: The beginnings of the Earth Sciences

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