Everything has its pecking order, and geology is no exception. The cocks of the rocks are the big, swaggering periods of the past that fill books, television programmes and natural-history museums.

The Triassic period stands out in Earth’s history as the time when dinosaurs first evolved. It was followed by the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods – at the end of the latter, the dinosaurs were wiped ...

No work on any science has yet been published in our language more exhaustive of facts, more clear in statement, or more philosophical in general character and arrangement, than Dana’s “ Mineralogy,” ...