CHAPTER EIGHT: HISTORICAL GEOLOGY

We study our Earth for many reasons: to find water to drink or oil to run our cars or coal
to heat our homes, to know where to expect earthquakes or landslides or floods, and to try
to understand our natural surroundings. Earth is constantly changing--nothing on its
surface is truly permanent. Rocks that are now on top of a mountain may once have been
at the bottom of the sea. Thus, to understand the world we live on, we must add the
dimension of time. We must study Earth's history.

When we talk about recorded history, time is measured in years, centuries, and tens of
centuries. When we talk about Earth history, time is measured in millions and billions of
years.

8.1 Fossils and Rocks

To tell the age of most layered rocks, scientists study the fossils these rocks contain.
Fossils provide important evidence to help determine what happened in Earth history and
when it happened.

The word fossil makes many people think of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are now featured in
books, movies, and television programs, and the bones of some large dinosaurs are on
display in many museums. These reptiles were dominant animals on Earth for well over
100 million years from the Late Triassic through the Late Cretaceous. Many dinosaurs
were quite small, but by the middle of the Mesozoic Period, some species weighed as
much as 80 tons. By around 65 million years ago all dinosaurs were extinct. The reasons
for and the rapidity of their extinction are a matter of intense debate among scientists.
The great bulk of the fossil record is dominated by fossils of animals with shells and
microscopic remains of plants and animals, and these remains are widespread in
sedimentary rocks. It is these fossils that are studied by most paleontologists.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the English geologist and engineer
William Smith and the French paleontologists Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart
discovered that rocks of the same age may contain the same fossils even when the rocks
are separated by long distances. They published the first geologic maps of large areas on
which rocks containing similar fossils were shown. By careful observation of the rocks
and their fossils, these men and other geologists were able to recognize rocks of the same
age.

Figure 8.1 Stratigraphic ranges and origins of some major groups of animals and plants

If we begin at the present and examine older and older layers of rock, we will come to a
level where no fossils of humans are present. If we continue backwards in time, we will
successively come to levels where no fossils of flowering plants are present, no birds, no
mammals, no reptiles, no four-footed vertebrates, no land plants, no fishes, no shells, and
no animals. The three concepts are summarized in the general principle called the Law of
Fossil Succession:
Succession: The kinds of animals and plants found as fossils change through time.
When we find the same kinds of fossils in rocks from different places, we know that the
rocks are the same age.

The Law of Fossil Succession is very important to geologists who need to know the ages
of the rocks they are studying. The fossils present in a rock exposure or in a core hole can
be used to determine the ages of rocks very precisely. Detailed studies of many rocks
from many places reveal that some fossils have a short, well-known time of existence.
These useful fossils are called index fossils.
fossils. The following are examples
examples of index fossils:
Trilobites for the Lower Paleozoic (Trilobite
(Trilobite fossils are only found in rocks of Paleozoic
age, and thus when a geologist finds a trilobite in a rock layer, he or she can be confident
that the layer correlates with other Paleozoic rocks);
rocks); and similarly, Foraminifera for the
Upper Paleozoic, and Ammonites for the Mesozoic.

8.2 Stratigraphy

Stratigraphy is the study of layered rocks. Over time, geologists have developed a few
basic principles for the study of these rocks, which allow us to determine the sequence of
events recorded by them. By a sequence we mean placing events in order from oldest to
youngest without knowing the exact duration of the events in years. The following are the
five basic principles of stratigraphy.

i. Original Horizontality.
Horizontality. This principle was first developed by
Nicholas Steno in the 17th century (1600s). Steno did some simple
experiments and determined that sand and mud settle out of water in
relatively horizontal layers. Where layers of sandstone and mudstone
(and other sedimentary rocks) are found tilted at a large angle to the
horizontal, some force must have acted on them after they were
deposited.
 ii. Superposition.
Superposition. Also proposed by Steno. This principle states that
where sedimentary layers (or volcanic ones, for that matter) are
stacked one on top of another, the oldest layers are found at the bottom
of the pile.

iii. Crosscutting Relationships.

Relationships. This principle was first described by
James Hutton in the late 18th century, and is applied to rock units and
geological structures that are not necessarily horizontal to start with.
A fault that cuts a rock layer, for example, must be younger than that
layer.

iv. Included Fragments.

Fragments. Another Hutton principle, this states that a
fragment of one rock included within another must be older than the
rock that contains it. A pebble in a conglomerate must be older than
the conglomerate (if you think about this carefully it can’t work the
other way around – a conglomerate can’t be made of pebbles that
didn’t exist when the conglomerate was deposited).

v. Fossil Succession.
Succession. The British engineer William Smith (around the
year 1800) discovered that in thick sequences of sedimentary rock the
fossils they contain change in a systematic fashion. This pattern is
repeated throughout the world, and thus by finding distinctive fossils
geologists can correlate rocks in widely separated areas and determine
that they have the same relative age.

8.3 Geologic Time and Dating

To understand Earth, it is important to realize that our planet is very old. Modern
methods of radiometric dating put Earth’s age at 4.6 billion years. If you could count one
number per second without stopping to 4.6 billion, it would take 150 years. This immense
time span is hard to comprehend. An appreciation for the magnitude of geologic time is
important because many of Earth’s processes are so gradual that vast spans of time are
needed for significant changes to occur. It took millions of years to create these
mountains and it will take millions more to wear them away.

8.3.1 The Geologic Time Scale

Geologists have divided all of Earth history into units of varying magnitude. Together
they comprise the geologic time scale. The time scale provides a framework for arranging
events of geologic past.

Figure 8.2 The geologic time scale (Ref. 7)

Eons represent the greatest expanses of time. The eon that began about 570 million years
ago is called the Phanerozoic,
Phanerozoic, Greek for “visible life”. The sedimentary rocks and
deposits of the phanerozoic eon contain an abundance of fossils. The phanerozoic eon is
divided into units called Eras.
Eras. The Era names refer to important differences in dominant
life forms. For example, Paleozoic (ancient life), Mesozoic (middle life), and Cenozoic
(recent life). Each era is divided into smaller units called Periods.
Periods. The changing fossil
record also played an important part in establishing each of the periods.

Figure 8.3 The development of plants and animals during each period (Ref. 7)

Periods may be divided into epochs.

epochs. Seven epochs are named for the periods of the
Cenozoic era. The epochs of other periods usually are just termed early, middle, and late.
Figure 8.4 The different epochs in the tertiary and quaternary periods (Ref. 7)

The Pleistocene epoch, which ended just 10,000 years ago, coincides with a time span
commonly known as the ice age.

The detail on the time scale does not begin until about 570 million years ago, the date for
the start of the Cambrian period. The vast expanses of time prior to the Cambrian period
are divided into three eons-the Hadean,
Hadean, the Archean,
Archean, and the Proterozoic.
Proterozoic. This greater
than 4 billion-year span is also commonly called the Precambrian.
Precambrian.

Figure 8.5 The Precambrian eon (Ref. 7)

About 88 percent of Earth’s 4.6 billion-year history is represented by Precambrian time.
Why are the eons of Precambrian time not divided into numerous eras and periods? One
reason is that Precambrian life was soft-bodied and therefore the fossil record is
insufficient compared to the phanerozoic eon. In addition much of the Precambrian rock
record is buried beneath younger rocks and/or altered by metamorphism.

8.3.2 Relative Dating

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, a number of attempts were made to determine the
age of the Earth. What the scientists were seeking was an absolute date. Prior to the
discovery of radioactivity, geologists had no reliable method of giving specific dates to
geologic events and had to rely on relative dating techniques. Relative dating is the task
of placing rock units and geologic events in their proper sequence.

The most basic principle of relative dating, called the law of superposition,
superposition, states that in
an undeformed sequence of sedimentary rocks, each bed is older than the one above.
When a fault cuts through other rocks, we know that the fault is younger than the rocks it
breaks. Also, when magma intrudes and crystallizes to form an igneous intrusion, we
know that the intrusion is younger than the rocks that were intruded.

Figure 8.6 Relative age of the rock layers, the dyke and fault according to law of superposition
The principle of original horizontality refers to the fact that layers of sediment are
generally deposited in a horizontal position. If we observe rock layers that are essentially
horizontal, we conclude that they have not been disturbed. Therefore, when strata are
folded of inclined at a steep angle we conclude that they must have been moved into that
position by crustal disturbances sometime after their deposition. When layers of rocks
have been deposited without interruption, we say they are conformable.
conformable. No place on
earth has a complete set of conformable strata. Everywhere, the deposition of sediment
has been interrupted many times. All such breaks in the rock record are termed
unconformities.
unconformities. Unconformities represent a long period during which deposition ceased,
erosion removed previously formed rocks, and then deposition resumed. Perhaps the
most easily recognized unconformity is an angular unconformity,
unconformity, where the older strata
dip at an angle different from that of the younger beds.

Figure 8.7 Show how angular unconformities are formed (modified from Ref. 7)

Disconformities are breaks in the rock record where the strata on both sides of the
unconformity are essentially parallel. The third type of unconformity is nonconformity
where the break separates older metamorphic or igneous rocks from younger sedimentary
rocks.
a b Nonconformity

Figure 8.8 Types of unconformity (a) disconformity (b) nonconformity

Although we put the events in their proper sequence, we have no idea of how many years
of earth history is represented using the relative dating method. But to put a specific time
frame on a geologic event we use absolute dating method.

8.3.3 Radiometric Dating

Absolute dates pinpoint the time in history when something took place, for example the
extinction of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. An understanding of radioactivity
allows us to accurately determine absolute dates for rocks that represent important events
in earth’s vast history.

Every atom has a nucleus that consists of protons and neutrons. Each proton has a
positive electrical charge and each neutron is neutral because it contains a positive and
negative charge. Negatively charged electrons orbit the nucleus. Each chemical element
on the periodic table is defined by the number of protons in its nucleus, which gives the
atomic number. Practically all of an atom’s mass is in its nucleus, indicating electrons
have practically no mass. By adding together the number of protons and neutrons in the
nucleus, the mass number is determined.
Figure 8.9 Protons and neutrons inside the nucleus (Ref. 7)

The number of neutrons in the nucleus can vary. These variants, called isotopes,
isotopes, have
different mass numbers. For example, carbon has two well-known isotopes (C-12 and C-
14). And one isotope of the element Uranium is U-238.

Figure 8.10 Isotopes of Carbon (Ref. 7)

The nuclei of some isotopes are unstable and spontaneously change to a different
element. This process is called radioactive decay.
decay. What happens when unstable nuclei
decay? One possibility is the emission of an alpha particle.
particle. An alpha particle consists of
two protons and two neutrons. For each alpha particle emitted, the mass number and
atomic number of the radioactive isotope are fewer by 4 and by 2 respectively.
Figure 8.11 Change of unstable parent nucleus into stable daughter nucleus by alpha emission (Ref. 7
modified)

Another type of radioactive decay is the emission of a beta particle,

particle, which is an electron
that was part of a neutron. When a beta particle is emitted, a neutron becomes a proton.
For each beta particle emitted, there is no change in the mass number. But the atomic
number becomes greater by one.

Figure 8.12 change of unstable parent nucleus into daughter nucleus by beta emission (modified Ref. 7)
A third type of radioactive decay is called electron capture.
capture. The captured electron
combines with a proton to form a neutron. When an electron is captured by a nucleus,
there is no change in the mass number but its atomic number is fewer by one.

Figure 8.13 change of unstable parent nucleus into daughter nucleus by electron capture process (Ref. 7)

In each type of radioactive decay, the number of protons in the nucleus, and thus the
atomic number of the radioactive isotope changes. For example, when Uranium-238
(U92) decays to Thorium-234 (Th90), the type of decay is alpha emission. When Thorium-
234 (Th90) changes to Protactinium-234 (Pa91), the type of decay is beta emission.

When uranium-238 decays, it emits 8 alpha particles and 6 beta particles before finally
becoming the stable daughter product, Lead-206. Before the stable end product, lead-206,
is reached, many different isotopes are produced as intermediate steps.
Figure 8.14 Decay of Uranium into different daughter isotopes Figure 8.15 The most common isotopes (Ref. 7)

The reason that radioactivity is a good “clock” for determining reasonably accurate absolute
dates is that the rate of decay for each radioactive isotope is constant and can be accurately
measured. The rate of radioactive decay for each unstable isotope is expressed as its half-life.
half-life.

Half-life is the time required for one-half of the nuclei in a sample to decay. The following graph
shows what occurs when a radioactive isotope decays directly to its stable daughter product.

Figure 8.16 the percentage of the parent and daughter isotopes after the number of half-lives (Ref. 7)

After one half-life, half of the radioactive atoms have decayed to the stable daughter product.
The number of radioactive parent atoms and stable daughter product atoms is the same. After a
second half-life, half the remaining radioactive atoms will decay. Compared to the number of
radioactive atoms at the beginning, there are now only one-quarter (1/4) as many. After the third
half-life the fraction of the original radioactive atoms remaining will be one-eighth (1/8).
For example, if the ratio of radioactive parent to stable daughter product in a given sample is 1:1
and the half-life is 5 million years, the age of the sample becomes 5 million years. But for the
same hypothetical isotope if the parent-daughter ratio is 1:7, the age of the sample becomes 15
million. And if the parent-daughter ratio is 1:15, the age of the sample becomes 20 million.

Sedimentary rocks can seldom be dated directly by radiometric means because the particles
composing most sedimentary rocks come from rocks of diverse ages. By contrast, the crystals in
an igneous rocks all form at about the same time. Absolute dates for sedimentary layers are
usually determined by examining their relationship to igneous rocks. For example, the age of the
Devonian shale in the following figure must be greater than 370 million years and less than 400
million years.

Figure 8.17 Absolute dating of sedimentary rocks using the relation ship of the igneous body to the sedimentary
layers