Quotes About Geology

The light-colored stones are the newest. Dark-green stones are the oldest. Some are pea-sized or smaller, and others are as big as 1 inch in diameter. There may be dozens and, sometimes, even hundreds of stones (of different sizes and colors) coming out at once (see Figure 13b).

ALMANDINE  (A'LMANDINE)   n.s.[Fr. almandina, Ital.] A ruby coarser and lighter than the oriental, and nearer the colour of the granate.Dict.

if you want to make a room full of geologist shut up, tir their hands to their sides.

It may be that it is only by the grace of granitization that we have continents to live on.

We always thought the living Earth was a thing of beauty. It isn't. Life has had to learn to defend itself against the planet's random geological savagery.

I do believe that enduring geological features are important, though I don't think I can be clear about exactly why.

Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.

My father is a geologist and he really thinks that scientists are going to save the world, so he wanted me to be one.

a worldwide flood destroyed all life on earth about five thousand years ago requires denying an immense amount of generally accepted knowledge—from astronomy, physics, geology, paleontology, anthropology, archaeology, biology, cave paintings, and more.

What is a stromatolite? he asks rhetorically, his eyes gleaming. The word comes from the Greek stroma, a mattress, coupled with the root word for "stone." Stone mattress: a fossilized cushion, formed by layer upon layer of blue-green algae building up into a mound or dome. It was this very same blue-green algae that created the oxygen they are now breathing. Isn't that astonishing?

Unlike some other religions, we have never felt it served a higher purpose to lie to children about geology.

So the major obstacle to the development of new supplies is not geology but what happens above ground: international affairs, politics, investment and technology.

Rocks are records of events that took place at the time they formed. They are books. They have a different vocabulary, a different alphabet, but you learn how to read them.

The Grand Canyon is living evidence of the power of water over a period of time. The power may not manifest immediately. Water can be very powerful, like a tidal wave.

Their bodies fit perfectly like this, two continents pulled eons ago but now rejoined.

The Silurian Period-the grandest of all the Periods,-and, as yet, apparently the seed-time of all succeeding life.

The Smoking Mountain (Knopf,

On the geologic time scale, a human lifetime is reduced to a brevity that is too inhibiting to think about. The mind blocks the information.

If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

A million years is a short time - the shortest worth messing with for most problems. You begin tuning your mind to a time scale that is the planet's time scale. For me, it is almost unconscious now and is a kind of companionship with the earth.

The sea is not all that responds to the moon. Twice a day the solid earth bobs up and down, as much as a foot. That kind of force and that kind of distance are more than enough to break hard rock. Wells will flow faster during lunar high tides.

Only once in the historical record has a jump on the San Andreas exceeded the jump of 1906. In 1857, near Tejon Pass outside Los Angeles, the two sides shifted thirty feet.

Geologists on the whole are inconsistent drivers. When a roadcut presents itself, they tend to lurch and weave. To them, the roadcut is a portal, a fragment of a regional story, a proscenium arch that leads their imaginations into the earth and through the surrounding terrane.

Basically, if you were a triceratops in Alberta, you had about two minutes before you got vaporized" is how one geologist put it to me.