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PETERS, K. E., WALTERS, C. C. & MOLDOWAN, J. M. 2005. The Biomarker Guide. Volume 1: Biomarkers and Isotopes in the Environment and Human History. Volume 2: Biomarkers and Isotopes in Petroleum Exploration and Earth History.

Second Edition. (First edition published 1993 by Chevron Texaco.) 1132 pp. total. Cambridge, New York, Melborne: Cambridge University Press. Price £150.00, US $250.00 (hard covers). ISBN 0 521 83763 4.

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If you are an organic geochemist, or a geologist who has ever made significant use of molecular organic geochemistry data, it is highly probable that you would be familiar already with the first edition of The Biomarker Guide(1993). The Biomarker Guide was the first, and remains really the only, text to synthesize comprehensively our knowledge of molecular fossils (biomarkers) in petroleum and ancient sediments. Since 1993 the field of organic geochemistry has flourished, and the application of molecular biomarker compounds has both matured and diversified, so an updated edition of The Biomarker Guide is therefore timely. The new edition is much longer (just over three times the pages of the first edition and in a larger format), and the scope has also been broadened somewhat, to including the application of biomarkers to pollution and archaeological studies; however, the focus remains primarily petroleum-related.

The first volume (471 pp.) is subtitled ‘Biomarkers and Isotopes in the Environment and Human History’. Despite this, of the eleven chapters, there is just one on stable isotopes, one on environment (actually dealing predominantly with oil spills), and one on archaeology (applied mainly to the investigation of man’s past use of petroleum products, gums, resins, and beeswax). Together these three chapters total less than 30 % of the main text. Much of the remainder is an update of the first half of the 1993 edition. There is a rather brief introduction to the . . . [Full Text of this Article]