Talk:Chalk Group

message: This article refers to the Chalk Group appearing in England in three formations: Upper, Middle and Lower. However the image of The Needles is captioned as being part of the Southern England Chalk Formation, with no reference to any of the previous three terms. Also the article Southern England Chalk Formation itself makes no reference to the three terms, nor even indeed to the term Group. This is confusing (at least it is to a non-geologist like myself), and I think requires explanation on both articles. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 08:28, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I've adddressed some of this by using the modern terms and made reference to various earlier one which will remain 'at large' for years to come. Further work required here to help clarify what is a confusing situation with stratigraphic names changing so frequently - hopefully we're now enetring a period of stability! cheers Geopersona (talk) 08:23, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

text: Useful conversation, helping the article become clearer. In fact 'province' is not a part of the stratigraphical hierarchy, it is a geographical descriptor; it defines different areas within which the rock sequence has been laid down and which may have - indeed do have, in this case - differing sequences (reflecting different depositional histories) even though all of the rocks are lumped together within the same stratigraphic group. Does that help? (See Province#Geology - though that description might be made clearer) cheers Geopersona (talk) 06:32, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

text: Indeed! It can become confusing because as our knowledge of geological processes and more importantly, of depositional and erosional histories increases so we are better able to make correlations in both time and space between different 'units' of rock, and as a result, associate these rock units (temporally) into different groups, formations and so forth and (spatially) into various provinces etc. Often new names are conceived, at other times old names are co-opted  - in any case earlier associations remain in the literature for years, decades, centuries even, waiting to trap the unwary! I guess a role for the interested Wikipedian is to guide others through this maze. I'm currently doing battle with the 'Southern England Chalk Formation' which seems to have proliferated through dozens of Wiki articles. I am unable to find any original reference to it ever having existed though. This phrase appears to be a fiction which has arisen from a Chalk formation described from southern England, getting mention in the 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (see http://www.archive.org/stream/encyclopaediabrit05chisrich#page/806/mode/2up/search/chalk) - a publication which in 2012 has so many shortcomings yet nevertheless has been copied wholesale into innumerable Wikipedia articles. The term 'formation' appears to have been understood in the modern sense of a defined rock unit by wikipedia authors, unaware that it was more loosely defined back then - indeed the word, like so many others, has a tightly defined modern scientific meaning but also a much looser general one; senses which are often mixed to the detriment of understanding. Geopersona (talk) 06:07, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

text: No you've not missed anything, I can be a bit over-wordy sometimes. There's always some tweaking to be done regarding style. Did you notice that I'd thought further about the 'Southern England Chalk Formation' article and considered that there is a place for an article describing the assemblage of landforms which rocks of the Chalk Group give rise to in southern and eastern England? Provided that is, that it does not contain the potentially confusing word 'formation' in its title. Geopersona (talk) 06:38, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Terminology: formations

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