Historical Geology

Welcome to the OpenGeology.org Historical Geology textbook!

This textbook is intended for undergraduate courses in Earth history. It was written by Callan Bentley, Karen Layou, Russ Kohrs, Shelley Jaye, Matt Affolter, and Brian Ricketts. It is a work in progress.

Instructors: Are you using this book in your classes? Please let us know.

Chapters:

• • • What is Historical Geology?
    • A Brief History of Earth
    • Earth as a System
    • Earth Materials – The Rock Forming Minerals
    • Earth Materials – Rocks
    • Plate Tectonics
    • Geologic time
    • Evolution Part I: The Theory
    • Taphonomy: The Science of Death and Decay
    • Innovations of Life Through Time: Life Finds a Way
    • Mass extinctions
    • Stratigraphy – The Pages of Earth’s Past
    • Using sedimentary structures to interpret ancient environments
      
    • Facies
    • Paleoclimatology

Case studies:

• • • Nebular theory and the formation of the solar system
    • Earth’s oldest rocks
    • Greenstone belts: primordial tectonics
    • Starting tectonics and making the first continents
    • Snowball Earth glaciations
    • Endosymbiosis
    • Discovering plate tectonics
    • The Grenville Orogeny & the rifting of Rodinia
    • Tippecanoe Sequence: A sequence stratigraphic view
    • The Taconian Orogeny
    • California’s Coast Ranges: a Mesozoic accretionary wedge complex
    • The mixed-up quartzites of Cape Agulhas
    • Palimpsest outcrops
    • Extremadura: interpreting a geological cross-section
    • Diversity in the marine fossil record
    • Reptile radiation
    • Dinosaur classification
    • Dino Debates – dinosaur ecological controversies
    • Western Mesozoic orogenies
    • San Andreas Fault & the Basin and Range
    • The Parallel “Roads” of Glen Roy
    • The Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington
    • The interplay of carbon & oxygen cycles in Earth history
    • Quaternary Quandaries: defining the geologic “now” and explorations of the Anthropocene
    • Human Evolution

Tools of the trade:

• • • Earth Materials – Mineral identification
    • Evolution Part II: Paleontological applications
    • Sequence stratigraphy
    • Geologic structures
    • Geologic maps
    • Way-up structures

Virtual field experiences (VFEs):

• • • Fossil correlation
    • Glaciers, glaciated landscapes, and glacial sediments
    • Glacier National Park, Montana
    • The Geodetic Hills Fossil Forests: Unraveling a Paleoclimate Puzzle
    • Massanutten Synclinorium, Virginia
    • The Moho (crust/mantle boundary)
    • A Plate Boundary Odyssey
    • Siccar Point, Scotland
    • Wind River Canyon, Wyoming
    • Stromatolite diversity in the Belcher Islands
    • Modern & ancient microbialites in Western Australia
    • Corridor H, West Virginia

Virtual sample sets (VSSs):

• • • Minerals
    • 3D mineral samples, set 1
    • Igneous rocks
    • Igneous supplementary set
    • Sedimentary rocks
    • Metamorphic rocks
    • 3D rock samples, set 1
    • Primary sedimentary structures
    • Sediment samples
    • Relative dating
    • Tectonic structures
    • Fossils

Additional case studies in the works (coming soon):

• • • Big Bang
    • Crust formation & evolution & differentiation
    • Moon forming impact
    • Ocean formation & evolution
    • Atmosphere formation & evolution, oxygenation
    • Origin of life
    • A history of fossil plants
    • Sauk/early Paleozoic transgression
    • The Acadian Orogeny
    • The Alleghanian Orogeny
    • Large igneous provinces / Flood basalts
    • Pleistocene “Ice Ages”
    • Epicontinental seas – Pz, Mz, Cz
    • Carboniferous coal & natural gas – cyclothems
    • PETM

Funding for this project was provided by VIVA, the Virginia Library Consortium and the Northern Virginia Community College Presidential Sabbatical Award.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Please inform us of any feedback or technical issues: cbentley@pvcc.edu