Book reviews Sedimentary Petrology By Maurice E. Tucker, 3rd edn., Blackwell, Oxford, 2001, 262 pp., £28.50 (ISBN 0-632-05735- 1 pbk) The third edition of Sedimentary Petrology, just recently published, is a response to the enormous amount of new material and new ideas presented in the 10 years since the previous revision. This time, sequence stratigraphy and the stacking patterns of sedimentary cycles have accounted for a significant amount of the new literature. In the preface, Maurice Tucker mentions the work relating depositional envi- ronments, facies and diagenesis to relative sea-level changes as well as climate and tectonic factors. With- out addressing the veracity of these developments, he rightly comments that any attempt to understand the origins of sedimentary rocks still depends upon a thorough understanding of their compositions, tex- tures and structures. He has written this book to provide the basic knowledge necessary for these other endeavours. To a considerable extent, this new edition represents a tinkering with an already successful publication. However, there are more important changes besides these updates. The most obvious is the addition of 16 colour plates with 74 photomicro- graphs of sedimentary rocks in thin section. These colour plates are, without exception, fine examples of the sedimentary rocks addressed in this book. Much of the earthâs surface is a cover of sedimen- tary rocks, the enormous variety of which was depos- ited in environments we mostly recognise today. There are 10 chapters. Besides the brief introduction, these subjects include: siliciclastic sandstones, con- glomerates and breccias; siliciclastic mudrocks; lime- stones and dolomites; evaporites; sedimentary iron deposits; phosphates; coal, oil shale and petroleum; cherts and siliceous sediments; volcaniclastic sedi- ments. The overall treatment is well balanced, and the lionâs share, over 40%, obviously devoted to the coarse siliciclastic rocks and limestones, including a fairly thorough discussion of their depositional envi- ronments. I do not know how it would work, but one change that may be worth considering in a future revision, for there will surely be at least one more edition, would be to devote an entire chapter to depositional environments so as to better accommo- date coals, phosphates and other of the less common sedimentary rock types. For example, it would be interesting to attempt to place the major coal measures into ââknownââ depositional settings. The major deltas and the SnuggedyâOkefenokee type swamps are not an easy fit. In fact, the requirements of preservation probably indicate accumulation at a lower sea-level position. Likewise, I believe that there has been some spectacular work on evaporites and diapirism, espe- cially from the Gulf of Mexico passive margin. Otherwise, there is nothing I would change in a very successful book. The stratigraphic record is made up of depositional sequences and their predictable arrangement of facies and system tracts. In the preface, Tucker comments that in the next 10 years, ââthe sequence stratigraphic approach may go out of fashion or may be replaced by some other paradigm.ââ Is this prescience or wishful thinking? Sequence stratigraphy is exactly what the name implies, stratigraphy or correlation. Maybe tectonics would be a better explanation, but that is unlikely to affect the fundamental way petrology is applied. Possibly more significant will be an appreci- ation of the sedimentaryâstratigraphic response to structurally controlled subsidence and periodic struc- tural inversion for these characteristics should affect hydrodynamic flow and patterns of diagenesis, some- thing that is of paramount importance to petroleum reservoir studies. Generations of students have cut their sedimentary teeth on this book, especially at British universities, but it does not appear to be as widely known among the North American universities. I wonder why. It offers a comprehensive treatment of sedimentary petrology, is very lucid and well illustrated, showing www.elsevier.com/locate/sedgeo Sedimentary Geology 152 (2002) 159â161 the obvious enthusiasm and knowledge of the author, and has been tried and tested over two decades. If I were still teaching, I would prescribe this book. I believe that it is still one of the best introductory texts available. Anthony J. Tankard Tankard Enterprises, 71 Lake Crimson Close SE, Calgary, AL, Canada T2J 3K8 E-mail address:
[email protected] Tel.: +1-403-278-1723; fax: +1-403-271-1872 PII: S0037-0738 (01 )00254 -8 Cenozoic Foreland Basins of Europe A. Mascle, C. Puigdefa`bregas, H.P. Luterbacher, and M. Ferna`ndez (Editors). Geological Society Special Publication No. 134. The Geological Society, London, 1998, 427 pp., £70 (ISBN 1-86239-015-0) Foreland basins are generally attributed to litho- spheric flexure beneath an encroaching thrust-fold belt load, and are thought to migrate as the overthrust load advances. Their sedimentary fill should thus preserve a detailed account of this tectonic history. The first time these relationships were documented was in the German Molasse basin. Now these basins are well understood. An Integrated Basin Studies Project (IBS), sponsored by the European Commission, was initiated in 1992 with the specific aim of systemati- cally examining the methods and techniques that would most satisfactorily address the processes responsible for evolution of these Cenozoic foreland basins of Europe, including the way basin dynamics and sedimentary fill are linked to deep lithospheric deformation. The IBS project and this publication cover several important issues common to all foreland basin work. Examples are the need to construct restored sections that are fully constrained by basin architecture, and to be able to link the stratigraphic record to the growth of the orogen. This study describes and compares basin development in front of three basinâorogen pairs, namely Guadalquivir basin and the Betic orogen, the Ebro basin south of the Pyrenees, and the German Molasse basin and its relationship to the Alps. This is the way, also, that the 18 contributions are arranged. The various papers compare tectonic load with observed lithospheric flexure, thus requiring estimates of the amounts and rates of erosion and topographic growth, knowledge of the major stratigraphic cycles, and argue the merits of eustasy versus tectonism. I would not have thought that there would be signifi- cant scope for eustatic influence in a dynamic tectonic setting! In a final section, three papers discuss various aspects of numerical modelling. The Guadalquivir basin is the final, Miocene to Recent, evolutionary stage of the Betic foreland basin. Very little is known of the earlier basin-forming stages, but the basin does appear to have formed above a relatively weak crust. An important new contribution describes laterally squeezed Triassic dia- pers and intensely imbricated Miocene wedges. In the Ebro basin, deep seismic is better able to demonstrate linkage between distinct stages of structural evolution and the stratigraphic response. Here, too, the concept of the tectono-stratigraphic unit is developed. Earlier strata are preserved as piggy-back or nappe-top syn- clinal basins. In another contribution, syn-kinematic fluid flow during the early compressional deformation is examined. Contributions devoted to the French Western Alps describe the thrust belt as a single thrust sheet detached on a layer of Triassic evaporites. These papers are concerned mainly with the history and rates of deformation. Progressive thin-skinned defor- mation is recorded in the suite of unconformities and migration of the foreland depocentres. The Swiss, German and Austrian Molasse tract of basins merges along strike with the French Western Alps where the Savoy Molasse is encompassed by the Alps and the southern Jura fold-thrust belt. A thor- ough integration of new structural and stratigraphic data in the Swiss Molasse basin reconstructs the structural relations in the NWAlps, the foreland basin and Jura belt. This study documents initial high rates of EoceneâOligocene shortening and forebulge advance, and after the Serravallian, a 100-km jump of the thrust front to the external Jura by detachment within the cover sequence. Analysis shows that the present foreland basin is only a small remnant of the original basin, a conclusion supported independently by numerical modelling. More contentious is the discussion of the effects of eustatic versus tectonic Book reviews160