HKB
CLASSIFICATION OF TERTIARY FORMATIONS.
Order of Succession of Sedimentary Formations. — Frequent Unconformability of Strata. — Imperfection of the Record. — Defectiveness of the Monuments greater in Proportion to their Antiquity. — Reasons for studying the newer Groups first. — Nomenclature of Formations. — Detached Tertiary Formations scattered over Europe. — Value of the Shell-bearing Mollusca in Classification. — Classification of Tertiary Strata. — Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene Terms explained.
By reference to the tables given at the end of the last chapter the reader will see that when the fossiliferous rocks are arranged chronologically, we have first to consider the Post-tertiary and then the Tertiary or Cainozoic formations, and afterwards to pass on to those of older date.
Fig. 86: Order of Superposition of Deposits
Order of Superposition.—The diagram (Fig. 86) will show the order of superposition of these deposits, assuming them all to be visible in one continuous section. In nature, as before hinted (p. 107), we have never an opportunity of seeing the whole of them so displayed in a single region; first, because sedimentary deposition is confined, during any one geological period, to limited areas; and secondly, because strata, after they have been formed, are liable to be utterly annihilated over wide areas by denudation. But wherever certain members of the series are present, they overlie one another in the order indicated in the diagram, though not always in the exact manner there represented, because some of them repose occasionally in unconformable stratification on others. This mode of superposition has been already explained (p. 94, p. 111), where I pointed out that the discordance which implies a considerable lapse of time between two formations in juxtaposition is almost invariably accompanied by a great dissimilarity in the species of organic remains.
Frequent Unconformability of Strata.—Where the widest gaps appear in the sequence of the fossil forms, as between the Permian and Triassic rocks, or between the Cretaceous and Eocene, examples of such unconformability are very frequent. But they are also met with in some part or other of the world at the junction of almost all the other principal formations, and sometimes the subordinate divisions of any one of the leading groups may be found lying unconformably on another subordinate member of the same—the Upper, for example, on the Lower Silurian, or the superior division of the Old Red Sandstone on a lower member of the same, and so forth. Instances of such irregularities in the mode of succession of the strata are the more intelligible the more we extend our survey of the fossiliferous formations, for we are continually bringing to light deposits of intermediate date, which have to be intercalated between those previously known, and which reveal to us a long series of events, of which antecedently to such discoveries we had no knowledge.