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Nature 440, 743 (6 April 2006) | doi:10.1038/440743a; Published online 5 April 2006

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The making of geology

Stephen Moorbath1

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In the late eighteenth century, ideas about the age of rocks and fossils gave rise to a new science.

BOOK REVIEWEDBursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution

by Martin J. S. Rudwick

University of Chicago Press: 2005. 840 pp. $45

Bursting the Limits of Time is a massive work and is quite simply a masterpiece of science history. It charts in the most scholarly detail the beginnings of modern geology from the mid-1780s to the mid-1820s.