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Based on a Symposium Convened at the 1985 Mid-Year Meeting of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists at Colorado School of Mines

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Landscapes of the past have always held an inherent fascination for ge ologists because, like terrestrial sediments, they formed in our environment, not offshore on the sea floor and not deep in the subsurface. So, a walk across an ancient karst surface is truly a step back in time on a surface formed open to the air, long before humans populated the globe. Ancient karst, with its associated subterranean features, is also of great scientific interest because it not only records past exposure of parts of the earth´s crust, but preserves information about ancient climate and the movement of waters in paleoaquifers. Because some paleokarst terranes are locally hosts for hydrocarbons and base metals in amounts large enough to be economic, buried and exhumed paleokarst is also of inordinate practical importance. This volume had its origins in a symposium entitled "Paleokarst Systems and Unconformities-Characteristics and Significance," which was orga nized and convened by us at the 1985 midyear meeting of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. The symposium had its roots in our studies over the last decade, both separately and jointly, of a number of major and minor unconformities and of the diverse, and often spectacular paleokarst features associated with these unconformities.

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I. General karst features and processes.- Characteristics of Dissolutional Cave Systems in Carbonate Rocks.- Geochemical Patterns of Meteoric Diagenetic Systems and Their Application to Studies of Paleokarst.- Controls on Mineralogy and Composition of Spelean Carbonates: Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico.- Breccia-Hosted Lead-Zinc Deposits in Carbonate Rocks.- Blackened Limestone Pebbles: Fire at Subaerial Unconformities.- Holocene Overprints of Pleistocene Paleokarst: Bight of Abaco, Bahamas.- Neptunian Dikes and Fissure Fills: An Overview and Account of some Modern Examples.- II. Examples of paleokarst terranes.- Proterozoic Paleokarst Profile, Dismal Lakes Group, N.W.T. Canada.- Early Paleozoic Surface and Subsurface Paleokarst: Middle Ordovician Carbonates, Mingan Islands, Quebec.- Ordovician Knox Paleokarst Unconformity, Appalachians.- Surface and Subsurface Paleokarst, Silurian Lockport, and Peebles Dolomites, Western Ohio.- Madison Limestone (Mississippian) Paleokarst: a Geologic Synthesis.- Late Mississippian Paleokarst and Related Mineral Deposits, Leadville Formation, Central Colorado.- Paleokarstic Features on Mississippian Limestones, New Mexico.- Paleokarsts and Paleosols as Indicators of Paleoclimate and Porosity Evolution: A Case Study from the Carboniferous of South Wales.- Caves and Other Features of Permian karst in San Andres Dolomite, Yates Field Reservoir, West Texas.- Paleokarst and Related Pelagic Sediments in the Jurassic of the Subbetic Zone, Southern Spain.- Sedimentation and Diagenesis Along an Island-Sheltered Platform Margin, El Abra Formation, Cretaceous of Mexico.

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