Bestselling author McPhee takes us on another exciting geological excursion with this engaging account of life--past and present--in the high plains of Wyoming.
Description: In 1974, tectonic theoretician Christopher Scholz was at the beginning of what has become a distinguished career. Seeking field experience after graduate school, he signed on with the United Nations to conduct a seismological study of Botswana's Okavango Delta, where, he surmised, might lie a hitherto unknown branch of the great East African Rift. His account of how geological fieldwork is done presupposes that the reader have some knowledge of earth science, but it is also accessible to general readers. Of interest to all are Scholz's misadventures among 3.8-billion-year-old rocks, the oldest known on the planet, "remnants of a time when the Earth was a hot, roiling mass, just beginning to sort its primordial matter into crust, mantle, and core."
