Choice Review

This collaboration between Torsvik (Univ. of Oslo) and Cocks (The Natural History Museum, London) has produced an atlas of the positions of Earth's oceans and land masses over the past 540 million years. Paleogeographers divide the Earth into geological subunits--cratons, plates, and terranes--each of which is a distinct crustal block that has its own unique travel history. These 926 pieces have been digitized and mapped using open-source software to generate the atlas itself. The book is amazingly well illustrated in color, and is supplemented by online resources (www.earthdynamics.org/earthhistory/) that allow readers to build their own maps, tracing paleogeography back through time. Beginning chapters jump right into a detailed and scholarly background that establishes the basis for the methods used to generate the subsequent reconstructions. This is followed by a description of the tectonic units and a very brief chapter on the Precambrian--the first four-fifths of Earth's history. The core of the atlas comprises 11 chapters corresponding to each of the geologic periods of the Phanerozoic Eon. A brief closing chapter covers paleoclimatology. This book is a wonderful resource that will be useful to any individual with an interest in historical geology. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Paul K. Strother, Boston College