QUESTIONS of origin have long been a source of fascination for mankind. How did the universe come into being? Where did we come from? Which came first, chicken or egg?
The earth sciences encompass a particular richness of such questions. It is in the nature of origins that the traces left behind are often obscured by later events. We require modern specialist techniques and knowledge to unravel their details. At the same time, the uniformitarian principle – the idea that the physical processes that shaped the Earth have always been the same – is more problematic in the very deep…
