Rocks are crucial constituents of our lives, not only making the solid ground beneath our feet, but breaking up into the soil that feeds our crops, and providing the metal ores and other materials vital for civilization. This Very Short Introduction introduces the structure and diversity of rocks on Earth, in outer space, and on other planets.

Dr Jan Zalasiewicz is Professor of Palaeobiology at the University of Leicester, having previously worked at the British Geological Survey. A field geologist, palaeontologist and stratigrapher, he teaches various aspects of geology and Earth history to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and is a researcher into fossil ecosystems and environments across over half a billion years of geological time. He has published over a hundred papers in scientific journals and is the author of several books for OUP, including The Earth After Us (2008), The Planet in a Pebble (2012) and, with co-author Mark Williams, The Goldilocks Planet (2012) and Ocean Worlds (2014).

• Preface


• 1: Primordial rocks


• 2: First rocks on a dead Earth


• 3: Earth surface processes: the making of sedimentary rocks


• 4: Rock transformations: the story of metamorphism


• 5: Rocks in the deep


• 6: Living rocks, evolving rocks


• 7: Rocks on other planets


• 8: Human-made rocks


• Further reading


• Index