Evidence About Earth’s Past (Book)

- Unconformities

Geologists can learn a lot about Earth’s history by studying sedimentary rock layers. But in some places, there’s a gap in time when no rock layers are present. A gap in the sequence of rock layers is called an unconformity.

Look at the rock layers in Figure.
Hutton's unconformity, in Scotland.

They show a feature called Hutton’s unconformity. The unconformity was discovered by James Hutton in the 1700s. Hutton saw that the lower rock layers are very old. The upper layers are much younger. There are no layers in between the ancient and recent layers. Hutton thought that the intermediate rock layers eroded away before the more recent rock layers were deposited.

Hutton's discovery was a very important event in geology! Hutton determined that the rocks were deposited over time. Some were eroded away. Hutton knew that deposition and erosion are very slow. He realized that for both to occur would take an extremely long time. This made him realize that Earth must be much older than people thought. This was a really big discovery! It meant there was enough time for life to evolve gradually.