Heavy Minerals in Colour

Heavy minerals - minerals that sink rather than float in a dense liquid - are introduced in this work. Its main aim is to provide a manual to assist in the microscopic identification of common transparent heavy minerals in sediments. The first part deals with the principles of heavy mineral analysis and discusses the significance of factors affecting heavy mineral assemblages; there are brief references to commonly used laboratory methods and auxiliary techniques and the section concludes with examples. The book then looks at identification and offers a description of detrital morphology and diagnostic features of 61 transparent heavy mineral species. Optical properties and characteristics are presented together with information on the occurrence of these minerals in their parent rocks. This work should be of interest to students, researchers and professionals in sedimentology and petroleum exploration, especially those concerned with clastic hydrocarbon reservoirs.