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The Cenozoic Era: Lyellian (Chrono)Stratigraphy and 9 Nomenclatural Reform at the Millennium

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The Cenozoic Era: Lyellian (Chrono)Stratigraphy and 9 Nomenclatural Reform at the Millennium Downloaded from http://sp.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on September 29, 2021 The Cenozoic Era: Lyellian (chrono)stratigraphy and 9 nomenclatural reform at the millennium WILLIAM A. BERGGREN Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA Abstract: The historical and intellectual framework and contemporary influences and sources leading to, and associated with, Charles Lyell's studies of Tertiary stratigraphy are reviewed. The nomenclatural hierarchy into which some of Lyell's stratigraphic terms have been subsequently grouped is then analysed. Lyell's terms 'Eocene', 'Miocene', 'Pliocene" (1833) and 'Pleistocene' (1839) were essentially biostratigraphic/biochronologic in nature. Together with the subsequently defined 'Oligocene' (1854) and 'Paleocene' (1874), they have gradually aquired a chronostratigraphic connotation over the past 100 years. The term 'Neogene' (Hdrnes 1853, 1856, 1864), when transferred from its original biostratigraphic/biochronologic (Lyellian) to a chronostratigraphic connotation, includes the stratigraphic record of the Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene and Recent (subsequently termed Holocene) epochs (equivalent to the 'periods' of Lyell). Thus a Neogene/Quaternary boundary is wholly inappropriate as a standard chronostratigraphic boundary. The 'Palaeogene' (Naumann 1866) now comfortably accomodates the stratigraphic record of the Paleocene, Eocene and Oligocene epochs The terms 'Palaeogene' and 'Neogene' should be used as period/system subdivisions of the Cenozoic Era. 'Tertiary' and 'Quaternary' should be abandoned, relicts of a now outmoded, and inappropriate, pre-Lyellian stratigraphy. Retention of the term 'Quaternary' for geopolitical purposes (institutional affiliation or scientific/professional identification), as opposed to its retention as part of the standard stratigraphic hagiography, is recommended and would reduce, if not eventually eliminate, continuing but unnecessary, and unscientific, rancorous debate over standard Cenozoic chronostratigraphic terminology. Events in human history may be characterized in colleague and collaborator in France, Gdrard Paul terms of the totally unrelated phenomena of Deshayes (1796-1875); 1797 saw the birth of serendipity and viticulture. 1769 was a good Charles Lyell III and the death of James Hutton- vintage year: it saw the birth in France of Leopold whose bicentennial we celebrate in this book - and Christian Friedrich Dagobert Georges Baron de his friend George Poulett Scrope (n6 Thompson) Cuvier, Jean Francois d'Aubuisson de Voisins, (1797-1876), with whom he shared an almost Napoleon Bonaparte and Francois Rend de identical life span; and of Carl Friedrich Naumann Chateaubriand; in Germany of Freiherr Friedrich (1797-1873; professor of geognosy at the Wilelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt; in University of Leipzig and author of the term Great Britain of William Smith, Sir Walter Scott, 'Palaeogene' which is discussed in greater detail Arthur Wellsley (the Duke of Wellington), Jane below. Two years earlier, Giovanni Arduino (1713- Haldimand Marcet (whose Conversations on 1795), whose term 'Tertiary' was to form the focus Chemistry, published in 1806 (fide Wilson 1972, p. of much of Charles Lyell III's scientific career, 548), momentarily tempted Charles Lyell to publish died, while one year earlier saw the birth of Sir his Principles in a popular, rather than academic, Henry De la Beche (1796-1855) and the death of version a generation later) and Charles Lyell II, Lyell's grandfather, and one year later the birth of father of Sir Charles Lyell III, the pre-eminent Jean Baptiste Armand Louis Ldonce l~lie de geologist of the Victorian era. Beaumont (1798-1874), Lyell's cordial friend and In similar manner the turn of the eighteenth/ adversary (in matters of the origin and age of nineteenth century witnessed a concatenation of mountain systems) in Paris. The turn of the century births and deaths (which was to be pivotal in the saw the death of Horace Benedict de Saussure and geological sciences and related events under con- Lazzaro Spallanzani (1799); the births of Heinrich sideration here (and a few of an unrelated nature; Georg Bronn (1800-1862), whose early work see below): 1796 saw the birth of Lyell's close (1829-1838) paralleled to a surprising extent BERGGREN, W. A. 1998. The Cenozoic Era: Lyellian (chrono)stratigraphy and nomenclatural reform at the 111 millennium. In: BLUNDELL,D. J. & SCOTT, A. C. (eds) Lyell: the Past is the Key to the Present. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 143, 111-132. Downloaded from http://sp.lyellcollection.org/ by guest on September 29, 2021 112 w.A. BERGGREN that of Lyell; John Phillips (1800-1874) who gave and subsequent additions to the hierarchy of strati- us the terms 'Palaeozoic', 'Mesozoic' and graphic terms and the need for reform in Cenozoic 'Caenozoic' in the mid-nineteenth century; chronostratigraphic nomenclature at the approach Barth61emy de Basterot (1800-1887), French of the millennium. While I have examined a broad naturalist who made the first thorough description selection of the literature dealing with Lyelliana, as of the Aquitaine Basin in the vicinity of Bordeaux well as the historical sources on which Lyell drew and provided a quantitative decription/catalogue of in developing his views of 'Tertiary' stratigraphy, I Miocene molluscan faunas; Jules Pierre Desnoyers have tried to avoid the polemics that have marked (1800-1887), author of the term 'Quaternary'; recent scholarship on the subject of Lyell and his Adolphe Th6odore Brongniart (1801-1876); the contemporaries and the issues with which they death of Dieudonn6 Sylvain Guy Tancr~de, called were dealing. I can instead recommend to the D6odat, gratet (count) de Dolomieu (1801); and the reader the relevant studies by Albritton (1963, birth of Alcide Charles Victor Dessalines 1980), Bartholomew (1976, 1979), Berry (1968), d'Orbigny (1802-1857), who formulated the first Conkin & Conkin (1984), Geikie (1897,1905), systematic subdivision of the Mesozoic and Gould (1987), Oldroyd (1996), Porter (1976, 1982), Cenozoic into 'stages' (1848-1852), characterized Rudwick (1963, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1974, 1975, as rock units with temporal connotation character- 1978), Rupke (1983), Schneer (1969), Secord ized by (r)evolutionary (catastrophic) faunal (1987), Zittel (1901) and Wilson (1969, 1970, changes at their boundaries. His deistic geostrati- 1972, 1980), amongst others. graphic framework represented the final demise of the school of Cuvierian 'catastrophism' that had Historical background informed the French school of geology for more than half a century. Abraham Gottlob Werner- founder of the Among unrelated but interesting, events that 'plutonist' school of geology-died in 1817, the occured at about the same time: the French same year that Lyell's interest in geology was landscape painter Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot aroused by attendance at William Buckland's shared an almost identical life span with Charles lectures in mineralogy at Oxford University. John Lyell III (1796-1875); 1797 saw the birth of Mary Playfair (1748-1819), who had brought the Wollstonecraft Shelley, the English novelist (who, important writings of James Hutton-founder of in 1818, at the age of 21, published her most the 'neptunist' school of geology - to the attention famous work, Frankenstein, or the Modern of British (and Continental) geologists, died two Prometheus, in the same year that Lyell made the years later, in the same year that Queen Victoria first of his many extensive tours of the Continent, was born (1819). It was the passing of an era and and immersed himself in its geology), and the births the next two decades saw the successive decadal of Heinrich Heine, the German poet, Franz rise of the influence of the 'English school' of Schubert, the German composer, the Italian geology (as personified by the academic quartet of composer Gaetano Donizetti and the French poet William Buckland (Oxford), William Daniel and playright Comte Alfred Victor de Vigny; 1826 Conybeare (Oxford; later he worked indepen- saw the deaths of Juan Chrisostomo, the 'Italian dently), Adam Sedgwick (Cambridge) and William Mozart', at the premature age of 20, and the Whewell (Cambridge) and the 'Lyellian school'. German composer Carl Maria von Weber; in 1827 The English school was devoted in the 1820s to Ludwig van Beethoven died and in 1828 so did diluvialism and catastrophism and in the 1830s to Franz Schubert, the same year that Lyell set out geological progressivism). The 'Lyellian school' of with Sir Roderick Impey Murchison on the trip to geology was latterly descended from the southern France, Italy and Sicily that was to 'Huttonian/Scottish school' of Edinburgh, devoted determine the course of his life. It would appear to uniformitarianism, and was personified by Lyell that the birth of the Romantic period in music (with and his closest colleagues and sometimes defen- the compositions of von Weber) and that of ders, Gideon Algernon Mantell, Dr John Fleming, 'modern' stratigraphy (with the publications of Hugh Falconer (with whom Lyell broke following William Smith) were serendipitously contem- publication of his Antiquity of Man in 1863; see poraneous at the turn of the eighteenth/nineteenth Falconer 1863), George Poulett Scrope, William century, although they were hardly inspired by the Henry Fitton, Charles Darwin and, somewhat later same muse. in his career, Herbert Spencer (the philosopher) and This chapter
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