~ Early Web Links ~

The Maryland Geological Society is a non-profit club founded in 1991 for amateur and professional fossil and mineral collectors, open to all who share a passion for the geological sciences. Visitors will find meeting schedules, field trip announcements, fossil and mineral FAQs, a gallery, newsletter archives, and articles by contributing scientists.

Created by Ronnie Van Dommelen, this site is a dedicated reference guide to the mineralogy of Nova Scotia, Canada, covering locality information, mineral images, species studies, and reported minerals from the region. It highlights the province's world-class zeolites, Bay of Fundy collecting sites, and serves as an online resource for mineral enthusiasts and collectors worldwide.

The Fluorescent Mineral Society hosts a stunning photo gallery showcasing minerals from around the world photographed under shortwave, midwave, and longwave ultraviolet light, revealing their glowing colors. Specimens from famous localities like the Franklin and Sterling Hill mines in New Jersey, Tsumeb in Namibia, and sites across China, Australia, and Brazil are featured with photographer credits and mineral identification.

Steve Allen's detailed reference site on the history and technical implications of leap seconds, delta time, and precision time scales used in astronomy and timekeeping. It features plots, tables, historical data, and analysis of the ongoing ITU-R debate over whether to abandon leap seconds from UTC.

The PALEOMAP Project, run by Christopher Scotese, is a comprehensive scientific resource illustrating the plate tectonic development of Earth's ocean basins and continents over the past 1.1 billion years. Visitors can explore full-color paleogeographic maps, interactive 3D PaleoGlobes, animations of ancient Earth configurations like Pangea, and download materials for geology education.

Webmineral.com presents a comprehensive reference for the Nickel-Strunz Classification System, organizing over 4,700 minerals into a systematic hierarchy of chemical groups from elements and sulfides to silicates and organic compounds. Built with contributions from mineralogist James A. Ferraiolo whose classification scholarship dates to 1982, the site serves as a serious database tool for mineralogists, crystallographers, and collectors.