Thomas R. H. Woolrych (text) and Anna Madeleine Raupach (illustrator), Rocks, Fossils and Formations: Discoveries Through Time, CSIRO Publishing, February 2023, 120 pp., RRP $29.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781486310968
The earth is a time machine with a long and fascinating story to tell. And the story is there in the rocks, which form the continents, or boil away in a magma below us, or gradually accrete under pressure to trap and preserving the fossils that are important evidence scientists need to understand how our living part of the story. There is the drama of tectonic plates as they drift across the planet, and then you will find that convection carries a much larger set of meanings than you could have imagined.
It is an exciting story.
Two geoscientists working with the publishing arm of the CSIRO have produced an imaginatively illustrated history of the earth’s first 4.6 billion years. And much of what they discuss is here on our Australian doorstep. For instance, we have the cyanobacteria of the stromatolites from 3000 million years ago which pumped oxygen into the earth’s atmosphere right here on the coast of Western Australia in one surviving colony of these creatures that once dominated our planet. And as for rocks, there are so many of the things in Australia—igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic—that we are spoiled for choice. We have the Flinders Ranges, Broken Hill, Gosse’s Bluff, the Twelve Apostles, the Three Sisters, and Uluru – and all of these rocks become stars in this story.
Thomas Woolrych has written a concise, deeply informative scientific text that any interested reader will savour, and Anna Madeleine Raupach has provided the illustrations only a scientist and an artist could produce. This is a book to have with you on that tour of Australia, which you will want to take as soon as you’ve dipped into its wonders.
Highly Recommended
Reviewed by Kevin Brophy