This book is a field guide that describes and explains the commonest minerals and rocks as well as introducing the most important fossil groups. In addition, a variety of geological structures are described and illustrated in the numerous diagrams and photographs. The guide is your perfect companion for hikes or walks in the countryside, inviting you to discover the geology hidden behind the landscapes surrounding us, as well as helping you to recognise the various minerals, rocks and fossils, you might encounter. The book is aimed at nature lovers of all types, as well as students of geology. It will provide the perfect companion on your excursions allowing the rocks to "come alive" and to reveal their histories, as well as the range and complexity of geological processes which have formed the Earth beneath our feet. Such processes - an interplay of magmatism, tectonics, metamorphosis and sedimentation, as well as climate and sea-level change - have shaped the Earth over millenniaand continue to do so even at the present time.

This book is a translation of the original German 1^st edition Pocket Guide Geologie im Gelände by Tom McCann, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature in 2019. The initial translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent detailed revision by the author ensures that the book reads stylistically like a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.

Tom McCann is Professor of Sedimentology at the Institute for Geosciences and Meteorology at the University of Bonn. He conducts research on the development of sedimentary basins in Europe, Africa and Asia and teaches sedimentology, basin analysis, ichnology as well as historical geology.