On the Geological Structure of the Alps, Apennines and Carpathians
More Especially to Prove a Transition from Secondary to Tertiary Rocks, and the Development of Eocene Deposits in Southern Europe

Murchison's authoritative study of 1849 which transformed contemporary understanding of European geology.

Roderick Impey Murchison (Author)

9781108072564, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 June 2011

176 pages, 41 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 1 cm, 0.23 kg

Few men were better placed to produce an authoritative study of Continental geology than Roderick Impey Murchison (1792–1871), President of the Geological Society and the Royal Geographical Society of London. Having conducted extensive fieldwork alongside Adam Sedgwick, in 1847 Murchison set out on a study tour that would change the manner in which geology was understood and debated. Delivered before the Geological Society and published in their Quarterly Journal in 1849, this paper challenged received wisdom as to the age and formation of the most impressive of geological phenomena. Covering crystalline and palaeozoic rocks, the Trias, iron mines, nummulitic rocks and fish slates, this landmark study and its numerous diagrams that illustrate it not only explain a geological subject, but also reveal the nature of nineteenth-century scientific scholarship. The book also contains a short supplementary paper on the distribution of surface detritus in the Alps.

Introduction
Part I. General Structure of the Alps
Part II. On the Cretaceous and Nummulitic Rocks of the Carpathian Mountains
Part III. On the Chief Formations of the Apennines and Italy
Concluding remarks
Species of the Nummulitic Eocene group having a wide geographical range
On the distribution of the superficial detritus of the Alps, as compared with that of Northern Europe
Note on the geological structure of the Asturias, extracted from a letter of M. E. de Verneuil addressed to Sir Roderick I. Murchison.

Subject Areas: Geology & the lithosphere [RBG]