# Dominant group/Geology

Dominant group appears to be used in geology as a scientific or technical term that has an apparent origin in 1826 (174 b2k). The term itself is an entity within each field. Like a geologist, also a geological entity, so is a dominant group.
In theory, dominant group in geology may have at least four meanings: (1) a dominant group of geology-based entities, (2) geology-based sources, (3) geology-based objects, or (4) a dominant group in some way associated with geology.
Paleontology is usually a subfield of geology but it may be closer to biology and related subjects. Dominant group/Paleontology contains examples of dominant groups in paleontology.
Several areas within geography and anthropology that overlap geology are examined for their usage of "dominant group": archaeology, glaciology, hydrology, oceanography, Sedimentology, and soil science.

## Synonyms

Two different words having very close meanings are relative synonyms, while two different words having exactly the same meaning are absolute synonyms.
Distinguishing between absolute and relative synonyms "is an important distinction for a domain-specific terminology."
"[O]ne might exchange terms almost intuitively, as though one concept of a word is fundamentally the same as its relative "synonym.""
The relative synonyms of "dominant group" fall into the following set of orderable pairs:
Genera differentia for "dominant group" :
| Synonym for "dominant" | Category Number | Category Title | Synonym for "group" | Category Number | Catgeory Title |
| “superior” | 36 | SUPERIORITY | "arrangement" | 60 | ARRANGEMENT |
| “influential” | 171 | INFLUENCE | "class" | 61 | CLASSIFICATION |
| “musical note” | 462 | HARMONICS | "assembly" | 74 | ASSEMBLAGE |
| “most important” | 670 | IMPORTANCE | "size" | 194 | SIZE |
| “governing” | 739 | GOVERNMENT | "painting", "grouping" | 572 | ART |
| "master" | 747 | MASTER | "association", "set" | 786 | ASSOCIATION |
| ----- | --- | ------- | "sect" | 1018 | RELIGIONS, CULTS, SECTS |
'Orderable' means that any synonym from within the first category can be ordered with any synonym from the second category to form an alternate term for "dominant group"; for example, "superior class", "influential sect", "master assembly", "most important group", and "dominant painting". "Dominant" falls into category 171. "Group" is in category 61. Further, any word which has its most or much more common usage within these categories may also form an alternate term, such as "ruling group", where "ruling" has its most common usage in category 739, or "dominant party", where "party" is in category 74. "Taxon" or "taxa" are like "species" in category 61. "Society" is in category 786 so there is a dominant society as a relative synonym for a dominant group.

## Dominant sizes

"The Grunehogna Craton (GC, East Antarctica) is interpreted as part of the Archaean Kaapvaal Craton of southern Africa prior to Gondwana breakup. The basement of the GC is exposed only within a small area comprising the dominantly leucocratic Annandagstoppane (ADT) S-type granite."
"The granite is relatively fine grained (1–2 mm dominant grain size) and isotropic without any signs of ductile or brittle deformation."
"The dominant group of zircons with a crystallization age of 3067 ± 8 Ma is interpreted to define the crystallization age of the ADT granite."
"[T]onalite–trondjemite–granodiorite (TTG) [is] in the source region of the zircon-producing magmas."
"The dominant group of TTG gneisses in the [Swaziland Block] SB, however, formed from plutons intruded into the Barberton greenstone belt (BGB) between ∼3·46 and 3·43 Ga (Poujol et al., 2003)."
In the above primary source, "dominant grain size" is used only once and dominant group is used twice by the authors. Additional uses of "dominant": dominant granite-twice, "most dominant component"-once, and "dominant mechanisms"-once.
"Group" is used fifty-two times: eight for stratigraphic units (eg. Ritscherflya Supergroup) and after the above the remaining refer to various age groups of zircons, the focus of the original research.
Below is an effort to evaluate each dominant group hypothesis for the above dominant group uses.
* Accident hypothesis: dominant group is an accident of whatever processes are operating.
To test this hypothesis, assume that "dominant grain size" is an observation by the author, regarding the most frequent or largest average grain size, and it is an accident of the authors or the observations.
The synonym uses of dominant group, three out of seven uses of "dominant" suggest its not an accidental use by the authors but a word choice preference.
The natural processes could still be accidental.
Although grain size distributions sometimes approximate a bimodal or multimodal distribution, as in the figure on the right from another author, usually there is one significant peak in the frequency distribution, as suggested in the unprocessed distribution. But this is usually not the largest grain size. Dominance then is most likely related by the above author to the peak frequency of occurrence. The process that made a particular grain size the most frequent may be random (an accident) or a product of the grain production process (not an accident even though it may be best approximated by a random distribution). In the above primary source, the process is most likely magma cooling and grain crystallization from the melt following a fairly complex phase diagram.
For the second set of authors, "Mean grain size, however, reached a steady value irrespective of axial strain. This implies that a limited amount of strain is accommodated on each strand with further strain requiring new strands to form."
"Graph of incremental total volume (%) vs grain diameter (mm) [on the right] is from the laser particle size analysis on a log linear scale. The plot compares the grain-size distributions of gouge strands sampled from tests carried out at increasing amounts of axial strain (4.2, 6.5 and 11.2%). The grain-size distribution for undeformed Locharbriggs sandstone is plotted for comparison. The three gouge samples have very similar characteristic curves which exhibit both the same peak value, indicating significant grain-size reduction with respect to the undeformed sample, and a similar range of grain sizes."
The figure on the right clearly shows that the changes in the grain size distribution were caused by the axial strain, not an accident. The authors of the second primary source did not use the term dominant group.

## Faults

Def. the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study through observation and experiment of the Earth's physical structure and substance, its history and origin, and the processes that act on it, especially by examination of its rocks, is called geology.
Def. the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study through observation and experiment of naturally occurring astronomical rocky objects, their physical structure and substance, history and origin, and the processes that act on them, especially by examination of their rocks, is called astrogeology.

## Entities

"Those who do not share the values of the dominant group may have been separated out, voluntarily or otherwise."
"Because most of the lectures in the eighteenth century and even some in the beginning of the nineteenth were delivered in Latin, ex-seminarians and priests' sons had a decided advantage over other students and formed the dominant group in the first student bodies."

## Sources

Geological sources may be fluid substances.
"The spatial and temporal variations observed in these magmas, which comprise a dominant group of potassic lavas derived from the enriched lithospheric mantle and collision-type adakites produced by partial melting of thickened mafic lower crust in the Lhasa terrane, imply the thermal structure of Tibetan deep lithosphere to have also evolved."
"In these islands a basaltic succession, originally estimated by James Geikie and Georgey as no less than 14,000 feet in thickness, contains a dominant group of lavas, non-porphyritic and porphyritic, which betray in their petrography and chemistry a distinct tholeiitic character."

## Objects

"The groundmass of the phonolitie lava flows is usually finer grained and some of these lavas contain a glassy mesostasis. The feldspars are the dominant group of minerals found in these rocks."

## Archaeology

Archaeology "studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, ecofacts, human remains, and landscapes."
Here, some of the dominant groups consist of ceramics, pottery, and tools left behind as fossils. Others are some of the archaeologists.

## Economic geology

"Crystals of the dominant group (80 vol %) are long prismatic (length/width ratios = 2.5:1–4:1), display obtuse pyramids, and show internal zoning in transmitted light."
"The dominant group of CO2-bearing fluid inclusions (types I and II) is considered the most precocious, and may represent primary FI."
"An attractive 5 x 3-cm Summitville, Colorado, specimen exhibiting a dominant group of thin covellite crystals on matrix."
"It is separated by an angular unconformity from the Middle ORS, which is the dominant group."

## Geochemistry

"The South Platte pegmatite district is well known for its significant enrichment in the rare earth elements (REE)".
"The replacement phases of the district can be subdivided into two well-defined assemblages, with allanite representing the LREE-dominant group and samarskite representing the HREE-dominant group."
"The dominant Group D rocks are large trachyandesite lava domes."
"Overall, polyunsaturated fatty acids were the dominant group of fatty acids (Table 2), except at Station 6 where saturated fatty acids also dominated the fatty acid pool."
"Composite tetrafunctionalised biohopanoids were the dominant group of bacteriohopanepolyols in all other sediments, and are likely to be a major source of the geologically occurring extended hopanes."

## Geochronology

"A date of 2809 ± 5 Ma was determined from 25 concordant analyses of 10 grains of the dominant group, and a 2945 ± 7 Ma date from 7 other grains."
"The relative probability plot (Fig. 10) shows a dominant group of 207 Pb/ 206 Pb ages at ~1560 Ma with minor scattered analyses around 1500 Ma and younger and one slightly older analysis at about 1630 Ma."
"Analyses from the dominant group and those that are consistent to within each of their analytical errors produced a weighted mean age of 550 ± 3 Ma (MSWD = 1.3, n = 11; Fig. 8C)."

## Geodesy

Def. "the geological science of the shape and size of the earth" or "the measurement and representation of Earth, its gravitational field and geodynamic phenomena (polar motion, Earth tides, and crustal motion) in three‐dimensional, time‐varying space" is called geodesy.
"This is expected since they are successive harmonics of the M2 dominant group."
"Consequently, the resulting age is an average on all sources, which is often close to the dominant group, when one age population is volumetrically dominant."
"The oldest and north at varying angles, so that the oldest sediments most dominant group (RG-1) contains faults that strike within the grabens have the steepest northward dip, with 75–110° and is the group that includes most of the faults"

## Geodetics

Def. "the scientific discipline that deals with the measurement and representation of the earth, its gravitational field and geodynamic phenomena (polar motion, earth tides, and crustal motion) in three-dimensional, time-varying space" is called geodetics.
"Concerning equilibrium networks it turns out that as in GJ (2003), equilibrium networks have a dominant group architecture, ie a group of firms are linked to each other while other firms have no links at all."
"The dominant group of deposits is fine sands accounting for 41.3% of the population (44 samples)."
"Third, an interest in legal geography, regarding maps as means to legitimize ownership claims by the dominant group to indigenous lands, and as sources that may be used in present land ownership disputes. Here we focus mainly on the first approach."

## Geomorphology

Def. the "study of landforms, their classification, origin, development, and history" is called geomorphology.
Def. each continuous surface of a landscape that is observable in its entirety and has consistence of form or regular change of form is called a landform.
Def. an assemblage of surfaces that are a portion of land, region, or territory, observable in its entirety is called a landscape.
"It was the dominant group on sediment-covered reefs below 75 m depth."
"Because they are isolated from influxes originating from overland transport of nutrients and sediments, they have little opportunity to influence the quality of ground water and surface water; hence, their interactions with the atmosphere through acid deposition and carbon dioxide exchanges become a dominant group of functions as described above."
"A tributary classification was defined by dominant group membership (including first and second order streams Milksick Branch, Auger Fork, Frozen Creek and Cobb Creek; Table 1)."

## Geophysics

"The dominant group frequency, I$_p$, which is the frequency of the peak energy over the time length t$_g$."
"The dominant group wave height, h$_p$, which can be obtained from the time series as the maximum trough-to-crest wave height over the time length t$_g$."

## Glaciology

Def. the "study of ice and its effect on the landscape, especially the study of glaciers" is called glaciology.
"The algae was the dominant group, and all obtained sequences belonged to Chlamydomonadales."
"Bacteria of β-Proteobacteria were dominant group in Nam Co, accounting for 61% of the total amount."
"Phototrophs were found to be the dominant group in terms of productivity and biomass in previous analyses (Mueller et al., 2005) and we therefore focused on cyanobacteria, green algae, diatoms, and other protists."

## Historical geology

"Historical geology is a study of life forms represented in the fossil record, as well as the chronology of geologic processes. Of the three main rock groups (igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary), sedimentary rocks are clearly the dominant group in Florida geology."
"The beginning of the Cenozoic saw the establishment of mammals as the dominant group of large-bodied terrestrial vertebrates."
"Such preemption might take a long time, as the realized speciation rate of the dominant group would be lowered owing to the presence of the other groups in the adaptive space, and as in many groups average species durations are several million years."

## Hydrology

Def. the "science of the properties, distribution, and effects of water on a planet's surface, in the soil and underlying rocks, and in the atmosphere" is called hydrology.
"Waters of “local” rainfall and imported, “Colorado” River aqueduct origins are easily distinguished from dominant, “native” Santa Ana river compositions by use of hydrogen and oxygen stable isotope analysis."
"The Santa Ana river isotopic signature will also be shown to be nearly identical to that observed for the dominant group of Orange County groundwater wells sampled in this study".
"Phenols form a dominant group of compounds deposited at the site but their abundance in the groundwater is reduced by an order of magnitude within 50 m of the lagoon."

## Mineralogy

"We take the boundary between the lithium and calcium, and lithium and magnesium–iron–manganese amphiboles at Li: Ca and Li: (Mg + Fe + Mn) ratios of 0.50 (ie, we use the criterion of the dominant cation or, in the case of the magnesium–iron–manganese amphiboles, the dominant group of cations) in both SCHEME 1 and SCHEME 2."
"The main concem in the Ba-dominant group is substitution at the T site; for walthierite, such substitution was not detected (Li et al. 1992)."
"For the Al-dominant group (Fig. 5), goyazite and svanbergite have long been used to indicate the PO$_4$ and PO$_4$-SO$_4$ minerals, respectively."

## Oceanography

Oceanography, also called oceanology or marine science, studies the ocean. It covers a wide range of topics, including marine organisms and ecosystem dynamics; ocean currents, waves, and geophysical fluid dynamics; plate tectonics and the geology of the sea floor; and fluxes of various chemical substances and physical properties within the ocean and across its boundaries.
"Towards the middle of isotope stage 1, there is a pronounced decrease in transparent shells, while the opaque-white ones become the dominant group."
"The copepods were the dominant group at station E offshore."
"In March 1979, the dominant taxa were polychaete larvae and crustacean nauplii, while in May the dominant group was Nematoda."

## Paleontology

The study of dominant group within paleontology combines biology and ecology with geology.
"Torrejonian 2 also marked the first appearance of the coyote-sized mesonychid (Cete) Dissacus, which was probably the dominant predator in the Torrejonian and Tiffanian."

## Petrology

Petrology is a branch of geology that studies rocks, and the conditions in which rocks form. Lithology focuses on macroscopic hand-sample or outcrop-scale description of rocks, while petrography deals with microscopic details. Petrology benefits from mineralogy, optical mineralogy, geochemistry, and geophysics. Three branches of petrology focus on the three major rock types: igneous petrology, metamorphic petrology, and sedimentary petrology.
With respect to igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary petrology, the constituent phrase 'dominant group' refers to petrology-based objects.

### Igneous petrology

With respect to the igneous petrology of the southern Paraná of southern Brazil, "[i]t was well known from surface mapping that LPT rocks were the dominant group in the southern Parana, but the borehole data indicate that LPT rocks underlie HPT, and that they in turn are overlain by IPT rocks." The basalts of the Parana continental flood basalt (CFB) province may be subdivided into two groups on the basis of their titanium (Ti) and phosphorus (P) contents: the high P and high Ti group (HPT) have TiO$_2$ > 3 % and P$_2$O$_5$ > 0.4 % and the low P and low Ti group (LPT) have TiO$_2$ < 2 % and P$_2$O$_5$ < 0.3 %. More recent work suggests there is a significant intermediate P and intermediate Ti group (IPT).
"The dominant magma type appears to have evolved from LPT to HPT to IPT with time, and the site of the magmatism may also have migrated northwards.". While the borehole and road cut evidence does not appear to effect the dominant LPT group in the south, it suggests that the IPT group may be dominant in the north, with the HPT group being dominant between these two.
"The granite is relatively fine grained (1–2 mm dominant grain size) and isotropic without any signs of ductile or brittle deformation."
Notation: let the symbol ADT stand for Annandagstoppane, and Ma stand for million years ago.
"The dominant group of zircons with a crystallization age of 3067 ± 8 Ma is interpreted to define the crystallization age of the ADT granite."
Notation: let the symbol TTG stand for tonalite–trondjemite–granodiorite.
Notation: let the symbol SB stand for Swaziland Block and Ga stand for billion years ago.
"The dominant group of TTG gneisses in the SB, however, formed from plutons intruded into the Barberton greenstone belt (BGB) between ∼3·46 and 3·43 Ga (Poujol et al., 2003)."

### Metamorphic petrology

On the serpentinization processes in ultramafic rocks from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge south of the Kane Fracture Zone, latitude 23° N, at Site 670, "[o]range to pale-green serpentinized harzburgites with a well-defined spinel and orthopyroxene foliation are the volumetrically dominant group of samples (Shipboard Scientific Party, 1988)."
"[S]erpentinization in our sample set occurred at temperatures greater than 350°C." "In our set of serpentinized ultramafic rocks, the oxygen-isotope results also indicate that serpentinization occurred at high (between 0.3 and 1.25), but presumably variable, water:rock ratios, assuming that the serpentinizing fluid was seawater or $^{18}$O-enriched seawater."

### Sedimentary petrology

In the Lower Cretaceous sediments of south-eastern Alexander Island are a "palaeogeographical distribution of conglomerate beds". From the petrology of the pebbles for seven conglomerate horizons, the pebbles can be divided into four compositional groups whose proportional representations are determined. With respect to the first compositional group of pebbles of volcanic material, "[i]ncluded in this dominant group are a wide range of volcanic rocks, both lavas and tuffs."
Further, three of the seven conglomerate horizons have a local majority of pebbles of volcanic material, while the other four have a majority of pebbles of plutonic material. The other two compositional groups are 'hypabyssal' and 'metasedimentary'.

## Planetary geology

Planetary geology, astrogeology or exogeology, is a planetary science concerned with the geology of the celestial bodies such as the planets and their moons, asteroids, comets, and meteorites. It includes determining the internal structure of the terrestrial planets, planetary volcanism and surface processes such as impact craters, fluvial and aeolian processes.

## Quaternary

The "whole change elapsed just opposite the course of events that characterized the great glacial oscillations with sudden warming followed by slow cooling. Therefore, the two phenomena hardly have the same cause."
"Our data strengthen this hypothesis and show unequivocally that haplogroup C, an endemic and dominant group of North American mammoths, was basal to all remaining Asian mammoth populations (including that on Wrangel Island)."
"Within the present study, however, the Tanytarsini have not been subdivided. This is clearly a dominant group at certain times."
"Ahl al Oughlam lacks the diversity of murids found in East African sites of this age, but also fully lacks any arvicolid, the dominant group in Europe at that time."
"Where multiple grain single aliquot OSL measurements provide a range of dose values, the dating specialist may choose to accept a dominant group of aliquots and reject outliers."

## Sedimentology

Sedimentology encompasses the study of modern sediments such as sand, mud (silt), and clay, and the processes that result in their deposition.
Sedimentary rocks cover most of the Earth's surface, record much of the Earth's history, and harbor the fossil record. Sedimentology is closely linked to stratigraphy, the study of the physical and temporal relationships between rock layers or strata.
"Each factor is described according to the dominant group of variables."
"The conglomerates are divided markedly into a dominant group, which is light colored with little evidence of humic material, and a subordinate group in which the matrix is dark with humic matter."
"The relationship between the sandstone petrography and seismic stratigraphy is shown in Figure 9. Group 1 is the dominant group and consists of very fine- to medium-grained sandstones with relatively good sorting."

## Geoseismology

"The dominant Love wave group is sometimes preceded by a small group of waves of similar type but of only ten or fifteen per cent of the amplitude of the dominant group."
"The four dominant group of peaks coincide precisely with the frequencies of the diurnal, semidiurnal, 8 h and 6 h components of the gravitational tides."
"The last principal arrival considered is the Rayleigh surface wave, R, which has a dominant group velocity of about 2.75 km/sec."

## Soils

"The second and dominant group is yellow reddish granite soil which is coarse and highly dispersible."
"The sediments were dominantly consisted of silt and clay of percentage over 95%, and that the <30 μm particle group was the “dominant group”."
"Hydrophobic acids, which constitute the dominant group of dissolved organic compounds in the humic layer, are effectively retained as water percolates through E and B horizons of podzol profiles (East- house et al., 1992)."

## Stratigraphy

"The numerically dominant group throughout zones A and B is the benthic Fragilaria".
"The dominant group consists of normal faults nearly parallel to the arc."
"Unfortunately, so far, Eocene beds have not been adequately studied biostratigraphycally, despite the fact that they have a very abundant microfauna with the predominant group of nummulitines in all levels."
"The trimaceritic coal facies: In this facies, vitrinite, liptinite and inertinite are all well represented. Vitrinite, however, is still the dominant group".
"The granitoid layers include a dominant group of equigranular, coarse- to medium-grained, massive to weakly foliated gneisses that range in composition from granite to granodiorite to quartz".

## Structural geology

Structural geology is the study of the three-dimensional distribution of rock units with respect to their deformational histories.
"The dominant group (type 1) consist of cloudy translucent cores that have in places been mantled by clear overgrowths with faceted terminations (Figure 8a, b)."
"The granitoid layers include a dominant group of equigranular, coarse- to medium-grained, massive to weakly foliated gneisses that range in composition from granite to granodiorite to quartz".
"The most dominant group (35%) in the population analysed has an age range of ~2680 to ~2740Ma."

## Volcanology

"As the diagram (Fig.10) shows, the majority of the steepest slopes is dipping both to the northwest and to the southeast, belonging to the dominant group of ridges striking NE-SW".
"The dominant group consists of normal faults nearly parallel to the arc."
"The basalts most enriched in incompatible elements (Group 1) are spatially restricted to the central part of the axial volcano, whereas the least enriched basalts (Group 3, the dominant group of basalts) are distributed along the entire segment."
"The first and dominant group contains plagioclase, clinopyroxene, actinolite, chlorite, epidote as the essential minerals and calcite, opaques and quartz as accessories."

## Hypotheses

* As the patrician class was/is interested in wealth, their dominant group still exists.
* Accident hypothesis: dominant group is an accident of whatever processes are operating.
* Artifact hypothesis: dominant group may be an artifact of human endeavor or may have preceded humanity.
* Association hypothesis: dominant group is associated in some way with the original research.
* Bad group hypothesis: dominant group is the group that engages in discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional criminal activity against other groups. It often has an unfair advantage and uses it to express monopolistic practices.
* Control group hypothesis: there is a control group that can be used to study dominant group.
* Entity hypothesis: dominant group is an entity within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Evolution hypothesis: dominant group is a product of evolutionary processes, such groups are the evolutionary process, produce evolutionary processes, or are independent of evolutionary processes.
* Identifier hypothesis: dominant group is an identifier used by primary source authors of original research to identify an observation in the process of analysis.
* Importance hypothesis: dominant group signifies original research results that usually need to be explained by theory and interpretation of experiments.
* Indicator hypothesis: dominant group may be an indicator of something as yet not understood by the primary author of original research.
* Influence hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article containing original research to indicate influence or an influential phenomenon.
* Interest hypothesis: dominant group is a theoretical entity used by scholarly authors of primary sources for phenomena of interest.
* Metadefinition hypothesis: all uses of dominant group by all primary source authors of original research are included in the metadefinition for dominant group.
* Null hypothesis: there is no significant or special meaning of dominant group in any sentence or figure caption in any refereed journal article.
* Object hypothesis: dominant group is an object within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Obvious hypothesis: the only meaning of dominant group is the one found in Mosby's Medical Dictionary.
* Original research hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article by the author to indicate that the article contains original research.
* Primordial hypothesis: dominant group is a primordial concept inherent to humans such that every language or other form of communication no matter how old or whether extinct, on the verge of extinction, or not, has at least a synonym for dominant group.
* Purpose hypothesis: dominant group is written into articles by authors for a purpose.
* Regional hypothesis: dominant group, when it occurs, is only a manifestation of the limitations within a region. Variation of those limitations may result in the loss of a dominant group with the eventual appearance of a new one or none at all.
* Source hypothesis: dominant group is a source within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
* Term hypothesis: dominant group is a significant term that may require a 'rigorous definition' or application and verification of an empirical definition.
Examples from primary sources are to be used to prove or disprove each hypothesis. These can be collected per subject or in general.