This textbook explains how mountains are formed and why there are old and young mountains. It provides a reconstruction of the Earths paleogeography and shows why the shapes of South America and Africa fit so well together. Furthermore, it explains why the Pacific is surrounded by a ring of volcanos and earthquake-prone areas while the edges of the Atlantic are relatively peaceful.This thoroughly revised textbook edition addresses all these questions and more through the presentation and explanation of the geodynamic processes upon which the theory of continental drift is based and which have led to the concept of plate tectonics. It is a source of information for students of geology, geophysics, geography, geosciences in general, general natural sciences, as well as professionals, and interested layman.

Wolfgang Frisch was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1943. He studied in Vienna and worked at the Mining University of Leoben (Austria), the University of Vienna, and the Technical University of Munich (Germany), before he was appointed to Tübingen (Germany) University where he held the Chair in Geology until his retirement in 2009. His research interests include structural geology and geodynamics, the genesis of mineral deposits, and the petrology of magmatic rocks. His working areas include the Alps, southeastern Europe, the Himalayas and Tibet, Arabia and Egypt, as well as Greenland, middle America, and Africa. Martin Meschede, born in 1957 is Professor of Regional and Structural Geology at the University Greifswald, Germany. He received his Diploma in Geology from the University Hannover, Germany, and his Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen (Germany). His research interests include geodynamics, structural geology, paleogeography reconstructions, particularly in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific region; marine geology as well as neotectonic and glacial processes in the Baltic Sea area. Roland Blakey is Professor Emeritus of Geology at Northern Arizona University (US) following over 34 years of teaching courses in Historical Geology, Sedimentology and Stratigraphy, Field Geology, and Tectonics. Most of his scholarly publications concern the sedimentary rocks and geologic history of the American Southwest. He is involved in the reconstruction of paleogeography maps that document past Earth history.