"In this well-illustrated book, Hildebrand expands upon his model for the development of the North American Cordillera detailed in Special paper 457. Starting with an overview of Cordilleran geology he goes on to provide an in depth look at how the Rubian ribbon continent was assembled. He integrates the complex geology of the Cordillera into an actualistic model involving arc magmatism, arc-continent collision, slab failure magmatism, and transcurrent motion in both Rubia and the western North American margin. While much of the focus is on the assembly of the Rubian ribbon continent, Hildebrand explores its interactions with North America during the Sevier and Laramide events and concludes that North America was the lower plate in both"--Provided by publisher.

"Exposed crustal cross sections provide a unique direct view of continental crust, and are a major source of insights into variations in lithologic and geochemical composition, structural style, metamorphism, plutonism, and rheology with progressive depth through the crust. This volume provides a synthesis of crustal cross sections with a special emphasis on Phanerozoic sections from the western North American Cordillera, supplemented by articles on lower- and mid-crustal sections through Proterozoic crust in North America and Australia, and the classic crustal section of Fiordland, New Zealand. Many of the papers describe multidisciplinary research on crustal sections and include data from various combinations of structural analysis, geochemistry, geothermobarometry, geochronology, geophysics, and other disciplines. The volume also discusses common problems for the interpretation of crustal cross sections, including how sections that expose deep-crustal rocks are eventually exhumed, and leading to the conclusion that there is no simple 'standard model' for continental crust. This volume will be useful to those interested in structural geology, tectonics, geodynamics, regional geology, petrology, geochemistry/isotope geology, and geophysics."--Pub. desc.

In this Special Paper, Hildebrand and Whalen present a big-picture, paradigm-busting synthesis that examines the tectonic setting, temporal relations, and geochemistry of many plutons within Cretaceous batholithic terranes of the North American Cordillera. In addition to their compelling tectonic synthesis, they argue that most of the batholiths are not products of arc magmatism as commonly believed, but instead were formed by slab failure during and after collision. They show that slab window and Precambrian TTG suites share many geochemical similarities with Cretaceous slab failure rocks. Geochemical and isotopic data indicate that the slab failure magmas were derived dominantly from the mantle and thus have been one of the largest contributors to growth of continental crust. The authors also note that slab failure plutons emplaced into the epizone are commonly associated with Cu-Au porphyries, as well as Li-Cs-Ta pegmatites.

The origin of granite has for long fascinated geologists though serious debate on the topic may be said to date from a famous meeting of the Geological Society of France in 1847. My own introduction to the subject began exactly one hundred years later when, in an interview with Profes sor H. H. Read, I entered his study as an amateur fossil collector and left it as a committed granite petrologist - after just ten minutes! I can hardly aspire to convert my reader in so dramatic a way, yet this book is an attempt, however inadequate, to pass on the enthusiasm that I inherited, and which has been reinforced by innumerable discussions on the outcrop with granitologists of many nationalities and of many shades of opinion. Since the 1960s, interest in granites has been greatly stimulated by the thesis that granites image their source rocks in the inaccessible deep crust, and that their diversity is the result of varying global tectonic context. So great a body of new data and new ideas has accumulated that my attempt to review the whole field of granite studies must carry with it a possible charge of arrogance, especially as I have adopted the teaching device of presenting the material from a personal point of view with its thinly disguised prejudices.

"The science of informatics in the broadest sense has been several thousands of years in the making. With the recent emergence of large storage devices and high-speed processing of data, it has become possible to organize vast amounts of data as digital products with ontologic tags and concepts for smart queries. Coupling this computational capability with earth science data defines the emerging field of geoinformatics. Since the science of geology was established several centuries ago, observations led to conclusions that were integrative in concept and clearly had profound implications for the birth of geology. As disciplinary information about Earth becomes more voluminous, the use of geoinformatics will lead to integrative, science-based discoveries of new knowledge about planetary systems. Twenty one research papers, co-authored by 96 researchers from both earth and computer sciences, provide the first-ever organized presentation of the science of informatics as it relates to geology. Readers will readily recognize the vast intellectual content represented by these papers as they seek to address the core research goals of geoinformatics."--Publisher's website.

Volume 56 of the Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry reviews the current state of knowledge on the epidote minerals with special emphasis on the advances that were made since the comprehensive review of Deer et al. (1986). In the Introduction, we review the structure, optical data and crystal chemistry of this mineral group, all of which form the basis for understanding much of the following material in the volume. In addition, we provide some information on special topics, such as morphology and growth, deformation behavior, and gemology. Thermodynamic properties (Chapter 2, Gottschalk), the spectroscopy of the epidote minerals (Chapter 3, Liebscher) and a review of the experimental studies (Chapter 4, Poli and Schmidt) constitute the first section of chapters. These fields are closely related, and all three chapters show the significant progress over the last years, but that some of the critical questions such as the problem of miscibility and miscibility gaps are still not completely solved. This section concludes with a review of fluid inclusion studies (Chapter 5, Klemd), a topic that turned out to be of large interest for petrogenetic interpretation, and leads to the description of natural epidote occurrences in the second section of the book. These following chapters review the geological environments of the epdiote minerals, from low temperature in geothermal fields (Chapter 6, Bird and Spieler), to common metamorphic rocks (Chapter 7, Grapes and Hoskin) and to high- and ultrahigh pressure (Chapter 8, Enami, Liou and Mattinson) and the magmatic regime (Chapter 9, Schmidt and Poli). Allanite (Chapter 10, Gieré and Sorensen) and piemontite (Chapter 11, Bonazzi and Menchetti), on which a large amount of information is now available, are reviewed in separate chapters. Finally trace element (Chapter 12, Frei, Liebscher, Franz and Dulski) and isotopic studies, both stable and radiogenic isotopes (Chapter 13, Morrison) are considered. We found it unavoidable that there is some overlap between individual chapters. This is an inherited problem in a mineral group such as the epidote minerals, which forms intensive solid solutions between the major components of rock forming minerals as well as with trace elements.

The 8th International Conference on Basement Tectonics was held in Butte, Montana, August 8-12,1988. Historically, basement tectonics conferences have focused on such topics as reactivation of faults, the influence of basement faults on metallogeny and hyrocarbon accumulation, and the use of geophysical and remote sensing techniques to interpret subsurface and surface geology. The 8th Conference diverged from past conferences in that a unifying theme was selected. Because ancient major terrane or cratonic boundaries are often postulated to be fault zones which are subsequently reactivated, the conference was organized to examine all aspects of ancient continental margins and terrane boundaries and to compare younger (Mesozoic) ones, about which more is known, with older (Paleozoic and Precambrian) ones. Moreover, because the 8th Conference was held in the northwestern United States, a greater emphasis was placed on the Mesozoic margin of western North America and the North American shield. The seven oral sessions and four poster sessions all dealt with aspects of the conference theme: characterization and comparison of ancient continental margins. The organizers extend their thanks to those individuals who graciously consented to serve as moderators for the oral sessions: John M. Bartley, Mark S. Gettings, M. Charles Gilbert, John M. Guilbert, Donald W. Hyndman, William P. Leeman, Robert Mason, and A. Krishna Sinha. The program with abstracts volume was prepared by S. E. Lewis and M. J. Bartholomew.