page_title: History of geology
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: History of geology / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Historical plate showing fossils that characterize the “Clay over the Upper Oolite” of England (more widely known as the Bradford clay, a clayey layer on top of a hardground which forms the basal surface of the Forest Marble Formation in the area of Bradford-on-Avon and is Bathonian, i.e. Middle Jurassic, in age&#91;1&#93;). This plate comes from the fundamental biostratigraphical work of the pioneer of modern geology William Smith. Note that the names of the fossil taxa may have changed since, mainly in a way, that the historical genus concepts subsequently changed over to family or even higher-ranked taxa. For some of the figured specimens, e.g. for the “Pear Encrinus” in figs. 1–3, there even were no formally described genera or species at the time. This taxon was first mentioned under a linnean binomen only in 1820 by Schlotheim (Encrinites parkinsonii)&#91;2&#93; and was 1821 referred to as Apiocrinites rotundatus by Miller&#91;3&#93;. Because Apiocrinites rotundatus is thus a junior synonym of Encrinites parkinsonii with Encrinites being an in fact meaningless genus from the earliest days of fossil crinoid systematics, the taxon today is referred to as Apiocrinites parkinsoni.&#91;1&#93; Deutsch: Historische Bildtafel mit Abbildungen von Fossilien, die den „Clay over the Upper Oolite“ („Ton oberhalb des Oberen Ooliths“, besser bekannt als Bradford clay, eine tonige Schicht, die einem Hartgrund auflagert, der die Basisfläche der Forest-Marble-Formation in der Gegend von Bradford-on-Avon bildet und ins Bathon, d.h. in den Mittleren Jura, datiert wird&#91;1&#93;) von England kennzeichnen. Diese Bildtafel entstammt der fundamentalen biostratigraphischen Arbeit des Pioniers der modernen Geologie William Smith. Man beachte, dass die Namen der Fossiltaxa sich seither wahrscheinlich geändert haben, hauptsächlich derart, dass historische Gattungskonzepte später oft auf Familien oder noch höherrangige Taxa übergingen. Einige der abgebildeten Exemplare sind lediglich informellen Taxa zugeordnet wie der „Pear Encrinus“ („Birnen-Seelilie“) in Fig. 1–3. Dieses Taxon wurde erst 1820 von Schlotheim erstmals unter einem Linné’schen Binomen (Encrinites parkinsonii)&#91;2&#93; und 1821 von Miller unter dem Namen Apiocrinites rotundatus erwähnt&#91;3&#93;. Weil Apiocrinites rotundatus mithin ein jüngeres Synonym von Encrinites parkinsonii und Encrinites eine faktisch bedeutungslose Gattung aus den Anfangstagen der Systematik der fossilen Seelilien ist, wird das Taxon heute unter dem Linné’schen Binomen Apiocrinites parkinsoni geführt.&#91;1&#93; ↑ a b c d Michael J. Simms (1999): Middle Jurassic of Southern England. Pp. 197–202 in: Hans Hess, William I. Ausich, Carlton E. Brett, Michael J. Simms (eds.): Fossil Crinoids. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (UK). ↑ a b Ernst Friedrich von Schlotheim (1820): Die Petrefactenkunde auf ihrem jetzigen Standpunkte. Becker’sche Buchhandlung, Gotha (archive.org), p.&#160;332 ↑ a b John Sebastian Miller (1821): A natural history of the Crinoidea, or lily-shaped animals. C. Frost, Bristol, doi:10.5962/bhl.title.11565, p.&#160;18
context_page_description: The history of geology is concerned with the development of the natural science of geology. Geology is the scientific study of the origin, history, and structure of the Earth.
context_section_description: In the early 19th century, the mining industry and Industrial Revolution stimulated the rapid development of the stratigraphic column – "the sequence of rock formations arranged according to their order of formation in time." In England, the mining surveyor William Smith, starting in the 1790s, found empirically that fossils were a highly effective means of distinguishing between otherwise similar formations of the landscape as he travelled the country working on the canal system and produced the first geological map of Britain.  At about the same time, the French comparative anatomist Georges Cuvier assisted by his colleague Alexandre Brogniart at the École des Mines de Paris realized that the relative ages of fossils could be determined from a geological standpoint; in terms of what layer of rock the fossils are located and the distance these layers of rock are from the surface of the Earth. Through the synthesis of their findings, Brogniart and Cuvier realized that different strata could be identified by fossil contents and thus each stratum could be assigned to a unique position in a sequence.  After the publication of Cuvier and Brongniart's book, "Description Geologiques des Environs de Paris" in 1811, which outlined the concept, stratigraphy became very popular amongst geologists; many hoped to apply this concept to all the rocks of the Earth. During this century various geologists further refined and completed the stratigraphic column.  For instance, in 1833 while Adam Sedgwick was mapping rocks that he had established were from the Cambrian Period, Charles Lyell was elsewhere suggesting a subdivision of the Tertiary Period; whilst Roderick Murchison, mapping into Wales from a different direction, was assigning the upper parts of Sedgwick's Cambrian to the lower parts of his own Silurian Period. The stratigraphic column was significant because it supplied a method to assign a relative age of these rocks by slotting them into different positions in their stratigraphical sequence. This created a global approach to dating the age of the Earth and allowed for further correlations to be drawn from similarities found in the makeup of the Earth's crust in various countries.
  In early nineteenth-century Britain, catastrophism was adapted with the aim of reconciling geological science with religious traditions of the biblical Great Flood. In the early 1820s English geologists including William Buckland and Adam Sedgwick interpreted "diluvial" deposits as the outcome of Noah's flood, but by the end of the decade they revised their opinions in favour of local inundations. Charles Lyell challenged catastrophism with the publication in 1830 of the first volume of his book Principles of Geology which presented a variety of geological evidence from England, France, Italy and Spain to prove Hutton's ideas of gradualism correct. He argued that most geological change had been very gradual in human history.  Lyell provided evidence for Uniformitarianism; a geological doctrine that processes occur at the same rates in the present as they did in the past and account for all of the Earth's geological features. Lyell's works were popular and widely read, the concept of Uniformitarianism had taken a strong hold in geological society.
  During the same time that the stratigraphic column was being completed, imperialism drove several countries in the early to mid 19th century to explore distant lands to expand their empires. This gave naturalists the opportunity to collect data on these voyages. In 1831 Captain Robert FitzRoy, given charge of the coastal survey expedition of HMS Beagle, sought a suitable naturalist to examine the land and give geological advice. This fell to Charles Darwin, who had just completed his BA degree and had accompanied Sedgwick on a two-week Welsh mapping expedition after taking his Spring course on geology. Fitzroy gave Darwin Lyell's Principles of Geology, and Darwin became Lyell's first disciple, inventively theorising on uniformitarian principles about the geological processes he saw, and challenging some of L
caption: Engraving from William Smith's 1815 monograph on identifying strata by fossils
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