The story of the Earth in 25 rocks: tales of important geological puzzles and the people who solved them

Volcanic tuff : Vulcan's wrath : the eruption of Vesuvius

Native copper : the iceman and the island of copper

Cassiterite : the "isles of tin" and the bronze age

Angular unconformity : "no vestige of a beginning" : the immensity of geologic time

Igneous dikes : the "Earth's great heat engine" : the origin of magmas

Coal : the rock that burns fires the industrial revolution

Jurassic park : the map that changed the world : William Smith and the rocks of Britain

Radioactive uranium : the atomic clock : Arthur Holmes and the age of the Earth

Chondritic meteorites : messengers from space : the origin of the solar system

Iron-nickel meteorites : the cores of other planets

Moon rocks : green cheese or anorthosite : the origin of the moon

The first sediments : early oceans and life? evidence in a grain of sand

Stromatolites : microbial condos : cyanobacteria and the oldest life

Banded iron formation : mountains of iron : the Earth's early atmosphere

Turbidites : archean sediments and submarine landslides

Diamictites : tropical glaciers and the snowball Earth

Exotic terranes : paradox in rocks : wandering fossils and traveling landmasses

Jigsaw-puzzle bedrock : Alfred Wegener and continental drift

Chalk : the cretaceous seaway and greenhouse planet

The iridium layer : the death of the dinosaurs

Lodestones : how paleomagic launched plate tectonics

Blueschists : the puzzle of subduction zones

Transform faults : earthquake! the San Andreas Fault

Messinian evaporites : the mediterranean was a desert

Glacial erraticts : a poet, a politician, a professor, and a janitor, and the discovery of the ice ages.