Dancing Elephants: The Story of Canada Beneath Your Feet

What a story! The characters are entire continents--moving around the surface of the Earth, crashing into each other, crushing islands, raising mountain ranges and opening and closing vast oceans--and the plot is nothing less than the formation of the planet on which we live. The world's geological past is a mystery of vanished oceans, towering mountain ranges and crashing continents. How did these evolutionary changes happen? In Canada a scientific project called Lithoprobe uses huge earth-pounding trucks known as "dancing elephants." Scientists send shockwaves deep down to the earth's crust which bounce back once they have hit a surface below. The readings show what is going on below the earth's surface right down to the tectonic plates that underlie the land beneath our feet. With this information, scientists can now map the earth's core and solve the mysteries of its evolution. Dancing Elephants and Floating Continents provides a fascinating and readily understandable explanation of the history of the Earth; how it has evolved and changed and how it continues to change, shift and grow. Filled with detailed, full-colour illustrations and original lithographic prints of the earth's core, this is a unique, educational and just plain cool view of the earth we stand on.