JAM Geology Syllabus – 2025 vs 2026

📢 BIG UPDATE: JAM Geology Syllabus – 2025 vs 2026
🎯 If you're targeting JAM 2026, read this carefully. A few key additions and changes you must know!

🪐 The Planet Earth
The 2026 syllabus adds “internal structure, composition, and age of the Earth” more explicitly.
It now includes radiometric dating methods like Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, and 14C — a clear upgrade from the generic "dating rocks" in 2025.
❌ Topics like Earth-Moon system and shape & size of Earth have been removed.

🏞️ Geomorphology
2026 version is more refined. It adds:

• Endogenous and exogenous processes

• Drainage basins, patterns, and network characteristics

• Explicit mention of karst landforms
  Overall, more aligned with geomorphic processes & landform evolution.

🧭 Structural Geology
Almost the same, but the 2026 syllabus emphasizes quantitative interpretation of structures using outcrop and borehole data.
🧠 More analytical depth than just numerical problems.

🦴 Paleontology
Streamlined and modernized!
❌ Graptolites and Anthozoa have been removed.
✅ Now includes Vertebrate fossil examples like Equidae and Proboscidea — this shows an evolution toward applied paleontology.
Application of macrofossils is now explicitly mentioned for age and paleoenvironment interpretation.

🪨 Stratigraphy
Very similar, but 2026 syllabus refines language and replaces older terms.
🆕 "Tertiary and Quaternary" now mentioned as Cenozoic sequences — a more updated geological time scale term.

💎 Mineralogy
2026 brings in Miller indices, and introduces twinning and twinning laws.
Also highlights chemistry, classification, and structure of minerals more clearly.
✅ Better-organized and deeper content.

🔥 Petrology
2026 now includes the use of binary phase diagrams to explain magma behavior — an essential addition for deeper igneous petrology.
Rest of the topics remain the same, but overall, it asks for more conceptual clarity than just classification.

⚒️ Economic Geology
More focused now!
Newly added ore-forming processes like:

• Magmatic concentration

• Hydrothermal activity

• Supergene enrichment
  Also includes ore grade estimation (in place of basic reserve calculation). More application-focused and technical.

💧 Applied Geology
2026 now mentions:

• Groundwater flow (not just types of aquifers)

• Basics of Remote Sensing — an exciting new addition that brings the syllabus closer to modern geology tools.

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