Formation Geology for Dummies

sample formation geology plot

Readers who stop by our topics index (see top of this page or direct link) might notice that we debunk an awful lot of posts about geology (along with earthquakes, volcanoes, minerals, and the oil business). That's probably because our founder worked for many years as a geologist, and takes the stupidification of the internet particularly hard when it's about his favorite science. He has been heard many times complaining about the term "geological formation," because he knows it's so often misused. Even he admits that he's rarely run across someone with so tenuous a grip on the geological meaning of "formation" as Dee S, who wrote the article "What is Formation Geology?" for WiseGEEK.com.

We don't know if Dee is the sister of eHowian Cheryl Ess, though we do know that she has an English degree and a JD; again proving that lawyers aren't as smart as John Grisham wants us to believe they are. We figured that out from Dee's very first sentence:

"In general, formation geology is the study of more than one rock unit that is traced over a large area..."

...which, in truth, makes no friggin' sense. Dee obviously read the geologist's definition of a formation (a mappable unit) somewhere, which is perhaps why she claimed in sentence number two that,

"A formation must be distinctive and thick enough so that it can be plotted on a specific location on a map..."

The bit about "on [sic] a specific location" is utter bull, since "mappable" refers to a display over the extent of a map, not "on" a single location. S prattles on and on, misinterpreting almost everything she encountered in some unknown reference. Her blather gets worse as she plods along, spreading such garbage as

"There are countless examples of formation geology across the globe. For example, the Austin Formation is located in McLennan County, Texas. To the naked eye, there appears to be limestone cliffs, but to well-studied geologists there is data that indicates there were volcanoes in the area that gave rise to a specific type of soil and rock."

Never mind that the actual formation she mentions is the Austin Chalk, and that it occurs at the surface and in the subsurface over tens of thousands of square miles... Dee goes on to mention other formations as well, explaining in her English Lit voice that,

"In South Africa, people travel from around the world to see the Enon Formation, one of the vastest formations in the country..."

Yep, it's one of the "vastest"...

Of course, to someone who actually knows more about geology than just how to spell it, "formation geology" is not the same thing as a "stratigraphic formation." Formation geology is a description from the petroleum industry, where the word "formation" is merely,

"A general term for the rock around [a] borehole."

Ergo, "formation geology" is little more than a description of the rocks that a well encounters as it's being drilled. We don't need highfalutin' examination of the lithostratigraphic code; don't need a list of three (out of what; hundreds of thousands?) mildly interesting stratigraphic formations; don't need some Dumbass of the Day with an English degree (or even a Juris Doctor) misinforming us about it.

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