PSYB21H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Desert Varnish, Siccar Point, Erosion Surface
Document Summary
Scottish geologist, james hutton realized at siccar point that rock layers exposed at siccar point require eartch to have a long and protracted history. Siccar point is famous for a boundary or contact that separates two chapters in. Contact is from right to left and below it are grey sandstone and shale, whose beds are nearly vertical. There were vertical grey beds below and inclined red beds above. Hutton"s insight was that you might be able to use modern processes to interpret events that had occurred in the. This is called uniformitarianism, and was the key step in the development of geology as a science. It is often stated as the present is key to the past meaning that processes that occur now have happened in the past. Hutton realized that the grey sandstone below the contact must have been tilted and eroded before red sandstone was deposited across upturned layers.
