The birth of the Caribbean Geological Conference in 1955 was a landmark in the search for geoscientific knowledge in the region. The proceedings of this conference continue to uncover many aspects of the Caribbean that remain virtually untouched and address questions that remain unanswered. This volume reports the most recent research on Caribbean geology, presented at the Fifteenth Caribbean Geological Conference held in 1998. The 24 research papers shed new light in the areas of plate tectonics, structural geology, metamorphic and igneous petrology, paleontology, biostratigraphy, economic geology, geochemistry, mineralogy, geologic hazards and geoscience education.

Contains 17 contributed chapters on the geology and tectonics of Panama, Costa Rica, and offshore areas. Five chapters describe onshore geology, three describe a combination of onshore geology and offshore marine geophysical data and attempt land-sea correlations, six describe marine geophysical dat

"AAPG Memoir 79, The Circum-Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, is the first volume in more than a decade to document such a wide range of research on the geology of this vast area. Of the total 44 papers, roughly two-thirds pertain to the Gulf of Mexico, with an emphasis on the Mexican portion of the basin, and to the petroliferous areas of the southern Caribbean, including Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Trinidad and Tobago. The remaining papers relate to the Antilles and Central America, as well as a series of papers that address region-wide topics such as plate tectonic evolution. A significant number of papers were contributed by authors from national oil companies and universities from within the region." --AAPG.