Book Reviews /Sedimentary Geology 00 ( 1998) 245-250 249

recent and ancient desert environments, contributed two articles to the book. These two keynote papers about the exploration history of the Southern North Sea and a summary of the basin development give an excellent introduction and overview of the area under discussion.

The detailed paper by George and Berry deal- ing with Upper Rotliegend synsedimentary tecton- ics, basin development and palaeogeography of the Southern North Sea can be regarded as the continua- tion of their publication in Vol. 73 of this series. The presented facies study results in palaeogeographic maps illustrating the complex tectonic and sedimen- tary evolution of the basin.

The contribution of Howell and Mountney tests the concept of sequence stratigraphy in a non- marine depositional system on the example of the Rotliegend Group. The question of accommodation space within a dominantly continental basin is dis- cussed under the aspect of time-based stratigraphic correlation, decoupled from sea-level changes.

The following two papers by Leveille et al. focus on the Jupiter fields area of the Southern North Sea. These two case studies about compartmentalization of Rotliegend gas reservoirs by sealing faults and di- agenetic controls on reservoir quality in Rotliegend sandstones show how fluid flow and diagenesis is directly controlled by the structural setting. Burial- related and fault-related geochemical aspects and their effect on production are discussed.

The possibility of pre-Permian source and reser- voir rocks is discussed in the paper by Cameron and Ziegler. The authors demonstrate on two Palaeozoic examples from the Southern North Sea the existence of source rocks in the pre-Permian succession or Sil- urian to Carboniferous rocks, respectively. Some new opportunities in hydrocarbon exploration are intro- duced, which could be developed due to the advance in acquisition and processing of seismic data.

The following, more or less complementary paper by Quirk provides a low-resolution sequence-strati- graphic interpretation for the fluvio-lacustrine West- phalian succession. This paper shows that the Upper Carboniferous sequence of uniform thickness can be mapped accurately with seismic data of good quality.

The need for detailed understanding of facies, sedimentology and tectonics in fluvial channel reser- voirs is demonstrated in the contribution by Mijns-

sen. This excellent paper presents the Schooner field, a natural gas accumulation in the Carboniferous Bar- ren Red Measures Group, UK sector of the Southern North Sea, as an example for the modelling of sand- body connectivity.

The last paper of the book under discussion is by Yang and Baumfalk. This article presents the “Application of High-frequency Cycle Analysis in High-resolution Sequence Stratigraphy” on Neogene and Carboniferous examples.

Some readers of this book might criticise the lack of presentation of Mesozoic and Cenozoic com- partments or rather plays. But that probably had exceeded the frame of this latest Geological Soci- ety Special Publication. However, this volume in- troduces some highlights in recent geoscientific de- velopments related to hydrocarbon exploration, pre- sented by highly experienced insiders, mainly from industry but also some from university. The book can be particularly recommended to exploration ge- ologists and geophysicists, who will find helpful examples and methodological approaches related to their profession. Additionally, this volume is cer- tainly also of much interest and benefit to more research oriented readers. The price of &59 for this well made book seems to be reasonable.

THOMAS WEIHE (Kassel, Germany)

PII 0037-0738(98)00020-7

A Color Illustruted Guide to Sedimentury Textures: Cold, Cool, Warm and Hot - An Introduction to the Interpretation of Depositional, Diagenetic and Hydrothermal Temperatures. C.P. Rao. Carbon- ates, Tasmania, 1997, paperback, VIII + 128 pp., $50.00, ISBN o-85901 -725-7.

This book, subtitled ‘An Introduction to the lnter- pretation of Depositional, Diagenetic and Hydrother- mal Temperatures’, has been published by the author and is being marketed through the Internet and ad- verts in appropriate journals and magazines. Prasada Rao has written a book from a perspective not cov- ered directly by other texts, namely looking at sed- imentary rocks and interpreting their compositions/ mineralogies and textures in terms of the temper- ature during deposition and early diagenesis. The

250 Book Reviews/Sedimentary Geology 00 (1998) 245-250

book is essentially a collection of field photographs nesis of carbonates, coal, oil and gas, and mineral and photomicrographs, with a concise background deposits, are very short reviews without reference to text. temperature, as to be expected.

The book is divided into three chapters. Chapter 1: Terrigenous elastics and volcaniclastics. Chapter 2: Carbonates. Chapter 3: Chemical sediments, di- agenesis, coal, oil and gas and mineral deposits. Each chapter has a brief review of the classifica- tion, composition and textures of that rock type and then a short section on temperatures of formation. The chapter then concludes with examples, where modem and ancient representatives of the sediments deposited under different temperature regimes are documented with some figures and appropriate pho- tographs.

In the elastics chapter the distinction is basically between glacial sediments and the rest. Volcaniclas- tics do not really show any differences as a result of the latitude of the eruption. In the carbonates chapter, distinctions are made between polar (with the Recent of Prydz Bay and Permian of Tasma- nia as examples), temperate (with the Recent of South Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand, Ter- tiary of Australia and New Zealand, and Permian of Malaysia as examples) and tropical carbonates (with modem subtropical sediments of Australia and the Ordovician of Tasmania as examples). The isotopic signatures of the various carbonates are given special attention, and there is a section on dolomites.

In Chapter 3, evaporites are discussed under po- lar, temperate and tropical categories, with modem examples from Antarctica, South Australia and the Arabian Gulf, respectively, and ancient polar evap- orites from the Permian of Tasmania. Phosphorites are presented as cool-water deposits - which is true of course, but they are rarely looked upon that way. The following short sections, which complete the book, on iron deposits, diagesiliciclastics, diage-

This small book is well produced and attractive looking. It is basically a collection of photos, like the well-established Atlases of photomicrographs of Mackenzie et al., published by Longman. Here the photos are a reasonable size, 10 x 7 cm, three to a page, and they have been printed very well in- deed, with a good caption alongside. I would have preferred to have seen scales on the photos, rather than 25 x or 63x, which are very difficult for the reader to convert to millimetres or microns. For the carbonates section, the Folk classification scheme is used but this is now less popular, having been replaced in most circles by the Dunham classifi- cation. As to be expected in a book emphasising the role of temperature, there are some sweeping statements over the significance of certain textures and lithologies. Nevertheless, the book is topical and will be of wide interest, since, for instance, there is currently much argument within the carbonate community over whether certain ancient carbonates were temperate rather than tropical. The term algal (as in algal mat) is frequently used where microbial would be more correct. There is an emphasis on ex- amples from the Southern Hemisphere - although that is not surprising since the author comes from that part of the world (University of Tasmania) - but it should be remembered that some of the best examples of modem and Tertiary temperate carbon- ates, modem and ancient tropical carbonates, ancient glacial deposits and polar evaporites, come from that region.

MAURICE TUCKER (Durham, UK)

PfI 0037-0738(98)00021-9