4 ms·

Yes please elaborate, this is fascinating! Can you recommend any good undergraduate textbooks on the subject, especially for someone with a quantitative backgro

• jofer 9y ago
  If you're interested specifically in the petroleum side, I've heard "Introduction to Petroleum Exploration for Non-geologists" by Robert Stonely is good. There are probably more up-to-date books out there, though. For the more general geology portion, if you're wanting something that's a bit more detailed, but still very approachable, "Evolution of the Earth" by Prothero and Dott is absolutely fantastic. You can probably find a slightly older paperback edition quite cheaply, as well. If you're really okay with a quantitative approach, Turcotte & Schubert's "Geodynamics" walks through an impressive amount of basic tectonics in a "let's do the back of the envelope calculations" manner. It's the most dog-eared book on my shelf. It's incredibly useful. However, it's a graduate level textbook, and it assumes you have at least a basic understanding of geological processes and terminology. It would be a very tough way to dive in.