Rocks and Fossils: A Visual Guide Book

Introduction

The Dynamic Earth

• Understanding rocks
• Reading the rocks
• Journey to Earth's center
• Rings of fire
• Spreading oceans
• Subduction
• Collision
• Earthquakes and faults
• Hot spots
• Understanding fossils
• The fossil record
• The five kingdoms
• Classification of fossils
• Evolution
• Adaptation
• Relating and mating
• Predators
• Avoiding predation
• Extinction
• Lifeforms and Earth's forces
• The divided continents

• Geological time
• Precambrian: first life
• Cambrian: explosion of life
• Ordovician: peak biodiversity
• Ordovician mass extinction
• Silurian: plants invade the land
• Devonian: the age of fishes
• Devonian mass extinction
• Carboniferous: the age of swamps
• Permian: end of an era
• Permian mass extinction
• Triassic: reptiles rise to dominance
• Triassic mass extinction
• Jurassic: rise of the dinosaurs
• Cretaceous: flowers bloom
• Cretaceous mass extinction
• Tertiary: age of mammals
• Quaternary: the age of humans
• After the next extinction

• How fossils form
• Types of fossils
• Trace fossils
• Reconstructing fossils
• Microfossils
• Rocks and their minerals
• How rocks form
• Rocks from melts
• Rocks from heat and pressure
• Layered rocks

• Active volcanoes
• Eruptions
• Ashfalls
• Craters and calderas
• Historic volcanoes
• Lava
• Columns, spires and dikes
• Geysers
• Deltas
• Waterfalls and reiverbends
• Gorges and canyons
• Mesas, buttes and tors
• Deserts
• Beaches and coastal remnants
• Karst
• Caves
• Swamps, bogs and tar pits
• Ancient seabeds and lakebeds
• Fossil sites
• Folds and faults
• Glaciers and icefields
• Rocks from space
• Rock structures

• Understanding minerals
• Color, sheen and luster
• Optical effects
• Clarity and inclusions
• Crystal systems
• Habit
• Cleavage and fracture
• Identifying minerals
• Native elements
• Metallic minerals
• Evaporites
• Weathering
• Silicates
• Feldspars
• Crystalline quartz
• Cryptocrystalline quartz
• Opals
• Diamonds
• Emeralds and other beryls
• Sapphires and rubies
• Tourmalines and garnets
• Other gemstones
• Organic gems

• Fossils and living groups
• Plants
• Simple-celled fossils
• Sponges and their relatives
• Corals, jellyfish and anemones
• Brachiopods and bryozoans
• Mollusks and annelids
• Cephalopods
• Echinoderms
• Arthropods
• Fossils in amber
• Fishes
• Amphibians
• Reptiles
• Dinosaurs
• Dinosaur tracks and traces
• Pterosaurs and birds
• Mammals
• Humans

Factfile

Glossary

Index