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The Evolution of Sedimentary Basins
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The Evolution of Sedimentary Basins. P. Kent, M.H.P. Bott, D.P. McKenzie and C.A. Williams (Editors). The Royal Society, London, 1982, 338 pp., £stg. 41.25 (U.K.)/£stg. 43.40 (overseas) (Hardcover) This nineteen-chapter volume constitutes the proceedings of a Royal Society Discussion Meeting held in June 1981. As is common with this type of publication, the quality, level and intent of its papers varies widely and it falls on the editors to choose, and prune and reorganize in order to maintain a balance of content that will satisfy the readership. I think it is generally recognized that the recent revolution in our understanding of sedimentary basins has been due to simultaneous and complementary advances in the fields of deep seismic reflection profiling, deep drilling and quantitative modelling of the mechanisms of their evolution. It is enlightening to review the content of the volume in this context. In my judgement the primary strength of this publication lies in its six chapters on the mechanisms of basin formation. The excellence of these contributions justifies purchase of the whole volume. By comparison, modern deep seismic results are poorly represented and I view this as an important and unfortunate omission. However, the importance of unambiguous stratigraphic control as provided by deep drilling is appropriately made clear as is the growing size and detail of this irreplaceable dataset in the papers by, for example, Powell on the Northwest Australian Margin. The editors have organized the papers into four sections: Continental Margin Basins, The North Sea, Intracontinental Basins and Mechanisms. In the first of these that consists of four chapters excluding Sir Peter Kent's overly brief introduction, I think the excellent Foucher, LePichon and Sibuet paper on the role of partial melting in the mantle on uniform lithospheric stretching models of the ocean-continent transition more correctly belongs in the Mechanisms section. The Avedik et al. papers on seismic studies on the north Biscay margin is one of the two primarily seismological papers in the volume, but its focus is not multichannel reflection profiling, but ocean bottom seismometer refraction experiments and two ship multichannel expanding spread profiles. Tantalizingly, mention is made in the abstract of this paper of 5 and 30 km aperture fixed offset reflection profiles, but these data are neither shown nor mentioned further in the text. The expanding spread profiles are very much underinterpreted and the solutions to the OBS refraction data are unconvincing. One chapter presenting and interpreting a set of state-of-the-art multichannel reflection profiles would have had a major positive impact on the tone and balance of this book: seismology is simply not well represented. The three papers that comprise the section on the North Sea contrast Leckie's simple and clear review of its lithology and subsidence history with Ziegler's detailed overview of faulting and graben formation in western and central Europe, and Christie's almost purely seismological presentation of deep seismic refraction results across the Moray Firth Basin. One is troubled in reading this latter paper by the fact
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that the primary conclusion (i.e., the anticlinal form to the Moho) seems to be based on a single data point and one of the tables appears to display standard deviations of two observations as a qualitative measure of uncertainty, The third section is a rich potpourri of six papers on lntracontinental Basins that covers northern Europe, the Canadian Arctic, Zagros and Western Canada. It is disappointing that Dewey and Pitman's contribution on the Late Palaeozoic basins of the southern U.S. is only a two-page abstract without figures. The creativity of these investigators as well as this regional coverage would have enhanced the volume significantly. The fourth section on mechanisms is the highlight for this reviewer with Watts, Karner and Steckler's magnificent and complete overview of iithospheric flexure and the evolution of sedimentary basins; Turcotte and Angevine's rigorous treatment of the thermal mechanisms of basin formation; Beaumont, Keen and Boutilier's complete and detailed comparison of foreland and rift margin sedimentary basins; Bott's brief speculations on the origins of the lithospheric tensions that cause basin formation; and finally Bally's enjoyable and wide-ranging musings over the evolution of sedimentary basins. These five papers, along with the Foucher, LePichon and Sibuet paper I mentioned earlier constitute the heart of this book: they provide the kind of thorough review and solid reference material that it is well worth keeping permanently on one's bookshelf. With a chapter or two on deep reflection profiling and perhaps one on the continental U.S. this would have been a great volume; as it is, it is just very good. G.M. PURDY (Woods Hole, Mass.)
Siliceous Deposits in the Pacific Region. A. Iijima, J.R. Hein and R. Siever (Editors). (Developments in Sedimentology, 36) Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1983, 472 pp., US $85.00. As a class, biogenic siliceous rocks receive remarkably little attention from geologists at large, considering their significance in interpreting depositional environments. "Chert", occasionally accompanied by the adjectives "bedded" or "nodular", is normally the full extent to which most geologists acknowledge the presence of biogenic siliceous rock, and rarely is the rock incorporated into interpretations of depositional environments as fully as is its calcareous counterpart, chalk. Although extremely productive, the community of geologists working on biogenic siliceous rocks is small. If this book accomplishes nothing else, it will prove invaluable for publicizing the significance and interpretations of a class of rocks that is largely ignored. "Siliceous Deposits in the Pacific Region" is a product of a 1981 international conference on Pacific siliceous rocks, which was sponsored by International Geologi-
The Evolution of Sedimentary Basins. P. Kent, M.H.P. Bott, D.P. McKenzie and C.A. Williams (Editors). The Royal Society, London, 1982, 338 pp., £stg. 41.25 (U.K.)/£stg. 43.40 (overseas) (Hardcover) This nineteen-chapter volume constitutes the proceedings of a Royal Society Discussion Meeting held in June 1981. As is common with this type of publication, the quality, level and intent of its papers varies widely and it falls on the editors to choose, and prune and reorganize in order to maintain a balance of content that will satisfy the readership. I think it is generally recognized that the recent revolution in our understanding of sedimentary basins has been due to simultaneous and complementary advances in the fields of deep seismic reflection profiling, deep drilling and quantitative modelling of the mechanisms of their evolution. It is enlightening to review the content of the volume in this context. In my judgement the primary strength of this publication lies in its six chapters on the mechanisms of basin formation. The excellence of these contributions justifies purchase of the whole volume. By comparison, modern deep seismic results are poorly represented and I view this as an important and unfortunate omission. However, the importance of unambiguous stratigraphic control as provided by deep drilling is appropriately made clear as is the growing size and detail of this irreplaceable dataset in the papers by, for example, Powell on the Northwest Australian Margin. The editors have organized the papers into four sections: Continental Margin Basins, The North Sea, Intracontinental Basins and Mechanisms. In the first of these that consists of four chapters excluding Sir Peter Kent's overly brief introduction, I think the excellent Foucher, LePichon and Sibuet paper on the role of partial melting in the mantle on uniform lithospheric stretching models of the ocean-continent transition more correctly belongs in the Mechanisms section. The Avedik et al. papers on seismic studies on the north Biscay margin is one of the two primarily seismological papers in the volume, but its focus is not multichannel reflection profiling, but ocean bottom seismometer refraction experiments and two ship multichannel expanding spread profiles. Tantalizingly, mention is made in the abstract of this paper of 5 and 30 km aperture fixed offset reflection profiles, but these data are neither shown nor mentioned further in the text. The expanding spread profiles are very much underinterpreted and the solutions to the OBS refraction data are unconvincing. One chapter presenting and interpreting a set of state-of-the-art multichannel reflection profiles would have had a major positive impact on the tone and balance of this book: seismology is simply not well represented. The three papers that comprise the section on the North Sea contrast Leckie's simple and clear review of its lithology and subsidence history with Ziegler's detailed overview of faulting and graben formation in western and central Europe, and Christie's almost purely seismological presentation of deep seismic refraction results across the Moray Firth Basin. One is troubled in reading this latter paper by the fact
308
that the primary conclusion (i.e., the anticlinal form to the Moho) seems to be based on a single data point and one of the tables appears to display standard deviations of two observations as a qualitative measure of uncertainty, The third section is a rich potpourri of six papers on lntracontinental Basins that covers northern Europe, the Canadian Arctic, Zagros and Western Canada. It is disappointing that Dewey and Pitman's contribution on the Late Palaeozoic basins of the southern U.S. is only a two-page abstract without figures. The creativity of these investigators as well as this regional coverage would have enhanced the volume significantly. The fourth section on mechanisms is the highlight for this reviewer with Watts, Karner and Steckler's magnificent and complete overview of iithospheric flexure and the evolution of sedimentary basins; Turcotte and Angevine's rigorous treatment of the thermal mechanisms of basin formation; Beaumont, Keen and Boutilier's complete and detailed comparison of foreland and rift margin sedimentary basins; Bott's brief speculations on the origins of the lithospheric tensions that cause basin formation; and finally Bally's enjoyable and wide-ranging musings over the evolution of sedimentary basins. These five papers, along with the Foucher, LePichon and Sibuet paper I mentioned earlier constitute the heart of this book: they provide the kind of thorough review and solid reference material that it is well worth keeping permanently on one's bookshelf. With a chapter or two on deep reflection profiling and perhaps one on the continental U.S. this would have been a great volume; as it is, it is just very good. G.M. PURDY (Woods Hole, Mass.)
Siliceous Deposits in the Pacific Region. A. Iijima, J.R. Hein and R. Siever (Editors). (Developments in Sedimentology, 36) Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1983, 472 pp., US $85.00. As a class, biogenic siliceous rocks receive remarkably little attention from geologists at large, considering their significance in interpreting depositional environments. "Chert", occasionally accompanied by the adjectives "bedded" or "nodular", is normally the full extent to which most geologists acknowledge the presence of biogenic siliceous rock, and rarely is the rock incorporated into interpretations of depositional environments as fully as is its calcareous counterpart, chalk. Although extremely productive, the community of geologists working on biogenic siliceous rocks is small. If this book accomplishes nothing else, it will prove invaluable for publicizing the significance and interpretations of a class of rocks that is largely ignored. "Siliceous Deposits in the Pacific Region" is a product of a 1981 international conference on Pacific siliceous rocks, which was sponsored by International Geologi-