2016-12-23T18:52:10

Using full-colour palaeogeographical maps from the Cambrian to the present, this interdisciplinary volume explains how plate motions and surface volcanism are linked to processes in the Earth's mantle, and to climate change and the evolution of the Earth's biota. These new and very detailed maps provide a complete and integrated Phanerozoic story of palaeogeography. They illustrate the development of all the major mountain-building orogenies. Old lands, seas, ice caps, volcanic regions, reefs, and coal beds are highlighted on the maps, as well as faunal and floral provinces. Many other original diagrams show sections from the Earth's core, through the mantle, and up to the lithosphere, and how Large Igneous Provinces are generated, helping to understand how plates have appeared, moved, and vanished through time. Supplementary resources are available online, making this an invaluable reference for researchers, graduate students, professional geoscientists and anyone interested in the geological history of the Earth.

Very different palaeogeographical reconstructions have been produced by a combination of palaeomagnetic and faunal data, which are re-evaluated on a global basis for the period from 500 to 400 Ma, and are presented with appropriate confidence (or lack of it) on six maps at 20 Ma intervals. The palaeomagnetic results are the most reliable for establishing the changing palaeolatitudes of Baltica, Laurentia and Siberia. However, global palaeomagnetic reliability dwindles over the 100 Ma, and more evidence for relative continental positioning can be gleaned from study of the distribution of the faunas in the later parts of the interval. The new maps were generated initially from palaeomagnetic data when available, but sometimes modified, and terranes were positioned in longitude to take account of key faunal data derived from the occurrences of selected trilobites, brachiopods and fish. Kinematic continuity over the long period is maintained. The many terranes without reliable palaeomagnetic data are placed according to the affinities of their contained fauna. The changing positions of the vast palaeocontinent of Gondwana (which has hitherto been poorly constrained) as it drifted over the South Pole during the interval have been revised and are now more confidently shown following analysis of both faunal and palaeomagnetic data in combination, as well as by the glacial and periglacial sediments in the latest Ordovician. In contrast, the peri-Gondwanan and other terranes of the Middle and Far East, Central Asia and Central America are poorly constrained.

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