M. Santosh

Metallic Mineral Resources: The Critical Components for a Sustainable Earth introduces the heterogeneous distribution of metal resources as well as the industrial use of metals. The main chapters then work systematically through abundant metal systems, scarce critical metal systems, rare critical metal systems, trace critical metal systems, and precious metal systems. The book wraps with a close examination of temporal distribution of mineral resources and an insightful discussion of the future of mineral resources. Researchers and engineers in economic geology and mining and exploration industries will find themselves returning to this key reference for years to come. "The authors are world renown geoscientists who have a combined 120 years of successful international industry and award-winning academic experience which brings remarkable and diverse skill sets required for this very timely and highly relevant publication. Metallic Mineral Resources is meticulously edited and this review took much longer than normal due to the tremendous amount of information and research to be adsorbed and processed. Each chapter has logical format, excellent figures and tables allowing the reader to systematically follow the various themes and discussions. The book is unique in that a broad range of disciplines and geopolitics are drawn on to emphasize the current and future metal supply and demand issues. The authors have succeeded admirably in describing and highlighting in great detail, the critical components for a sustainable earth, at a time when these issues are now more relevant than ever before." Douglas J. Kirwin, Ore Geology Reviews

**2025 PROSE Award Finalist in Earth Science** Mineral Systems, Earth Evolution, and Global Metallogeny provides insights into the critical parameters of Earth’s evolution, particularly in terms of thermal state, tectonics, and the atmosphere-hydrosphere-biosphere system that control the metallogeny of the planet. World-class to giant mineral systems are described and interpreted in terms of their relationship to critical periods of change in tectonic regimes within the supercontinent cycle and evolution of the mantle lithosphere. Specific times of formation of highly anomalous giant mineral systems, such as the so-called Boring Billion, are discussed together with specific tectonic environments, such as craton edges and thick lithosphere margins. This book provides an overview on how the evolution of Earth has dictated the nature and distribution of its mineral resources that are the foundation of our modern industries and provides insights into critical parameters for conceptual exploration targeting. Mineral Systems, Earth Evolution, and Global Metallogeny provides a helpful resource for researchers, academicians, undergraduate and graduate students, and geologists engaged in the fields of economic geology, geologic exploration, mineral systems, and earth evolution in understanding the timing and distribution of the world’s major mineral deposits and their relation to critical parameters controlling earth’s evolution.

To this day, there is a great amount of controversy about where, when and how the so-called supercontinents--Pangea, Godwana, Rodinia, and Columbia--were made and broken. Continents and Supercontinents frames that controversy by giving all the necessary background on how continental crust is formed, modified, and destroyed, and what forces move plates. It also discusses how these processes affect the composition of seawater, climate, and the evolution of life. Rogers and Santosh begin with a survey of plate tectonics, and go on to describe the composition, production, and destruction of continental and oceanic crust, and show that cratons or assemblies of cratons became the first true continents, approximately one billion years after the earliest continental crust evolved. The middle part of the book concentrates on supercontinents, beginning with a discussion of types of orogenic belts, distinguishing those that formed by closure of an ocean basin within the belt and those that formed by intracontinental deformation caused by stresses generated elsewhere. This information permits discrimination between models of supercontinent formation by accretion of numerous small terranes and by reorganization of large old continental blocks. This background leads to a description of the assembly and fragmentation of supercontinents throughout earth history. The record is most difficult to interpret for the oldest supercontinent, Columbia, and also controversial for Rodinia, the next youngest supercontinent. The configurations and pattern of breakup of Gondwana and Pangea are well known, but some aspects of their assembly are unclear. The book also briefly describes the histories of continents after the breakup of Pangea, and discusses how changes in the composition of seawater, climate, and life may have been affected by the sizes and locations of continents and supercontinents.