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.