This book completes Professor Shrock's full-scale history of MIT's Geology Department.

Approximately 200 years of the history of the development of the study of geology.

Examples are the nature of Earth's oldest rocks, the origin of continents, extraterrestrial impact and mass extinctions of organisms, rates of organic evolution, and recent developments on the origin of humans.

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book is a collection of papers presented in the symposia, held in Beijing, on palaeontology and historical geology. The papers deal with different topics, providing information on Palaeobiogeography and Palaeoecology of Asian countries, their faunal content, and fossil preservation.