Ollier C. Ancient Landforms

London: Belhaven Press, 1991. — 233 p.The formation of landforms by érosion, earth movements and volcanic activity has traditionally been thought of as geologically recent, often confined to the past few thousand years, the ice age, or perhaps the last two million years.
This book extends the time scale back and describes volcanic landscapes 30 and 50 million years old, 40 million year old caves, river patterns that were in existence before the break-up of the proto-continent Gondwanaland and gold deposits that were emplaced at the time of the dinosaurs.
Besides minor landforms such as hills, valleys and coasts, major features of the earth are examined, such as continents and oceans, island arcs and mountain ranges. The long history of such topics as continental drift, glaciation and sea level change are related to the evolution of the earth's landscapes.
This long-term view of landscape evolution, on the same time scale as continental drift, biological evolution and the formation of ore deposits, leads to a reassessment of many basic ideas of landscape formation, and of earth science in general.Landforms Ancient and Modern
Geological time and dating methods
Depositional landforms
Rivers and valleys
Weathering
Karst
Erosion surfaces
Plate tectonics and continental margins
Oceans and coasts
Volcanoes
Intrusive rocks
Faults and rifts
Mountains
Time, landforms and geomorphic theory
References