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Hutton's Unconformity is a name given to various notable geological sites in Scotland identified by the 18th-century Scottish geologist James Hutton as places where the junction between two types of rock formations can be seen. This geological phenomenon marks the location where rock formations created at different times and by different ...
An unconformity is a buried erosional or non-depositional surface separating two rock masses or strata of different ages, indicating that sediment deposition was not continuous. In general, the older layer was exposed to erosion for an interval of time before deposition of the younger layer, but the term is used to describe any break in the ...
Prior to the discovery of radiometric dating in the early 20th century, which provided a means of absolute dating, archaeologists and geologists used relative dating to determine ages of materials. Though relative dating can only determine the sequential order in which a series of events occurred, not when they occurred, it remains a useful ...
Cross-cutting relationships can be used to determine the relative ages of rock strata and other structures. Explanations: A – folded rock strata cut by a thrust fault; B – large intrusion (cutting through A); C – erosional angular unconformity (cutting off A & B) on which rock strata were deposited; D – volcanic dike (cutting through A, B & C); E – even younger rock strata (overlying ...
Hutton's Unconformity at Jedburgh. Above: John Clerk of Eldin's 1787 illustration. Below: 2003 photograph. Uniformitarianism, also known as the Doctrine of Uniformity or the Uniformitarian Principle, [1] is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the ...
A crystal that develops with a typical multi-branching tree-like form. Denudation The lowering of the earth's surface through chemical and physical weathering. deposition The geological process by which material is added to a landform or landmass. detachment fault A major fault in a mountain belt above which rocks have been intensely folded or ...
In historical geology, the primary methods of absolute dating involve using the radioactive decay of elements trapped in rocks or minerals, including isotope systems from younger organic remains (radiocarbon dating with 14 C) to systems such as uranium–lead dating that allow determination of absolute ages for some of the oldest rocks on Earth.
The sequence is made up of 22 m thick cycles, each with a basal erosion surface followed by dark grey shales with desiccation cracks, planar cross-bedded sandstones with wave rippled tops, overlain by trough cross-bedded micaceous sandstones. These cycles are thought to represent repeated progradation of deltas into a lake.