Stratigraphy for Dummies

stratigraphy in the wild

One of the interns politely pointed out to the assignments editor that it's been about a month since anyone nominated a DotD candidate from outside Leaf Group's warren of niche sites filled with old eHow.com content. Said the editor, "What's holding you up?" and so it was that, within minutes, the intern had proudly presented her first nomination... and it's a doozy. Without further ado, then, let's dissect the dumbassery permeating "What is Stratigraphy?", a Felicia Dye production at WiseGEEK.com.

As much as we detest it when people quote a dictionary, in this case we'll do the same thing. According to "Oxford Languages," stratigraphy is,

"[The] branch of geology concerned with the order and relative position of strata and their relationship to the geological time scale."

Such a definition presupposes that you know what "strata" means (besides being the plural of "stratum"). Strata are layered rocks, which includes sedimentary rocks and, to a lesser extent, layered volcanic rocks. The part about the time scale means that stratigraphers are very much concerned with the age of the rocks they're studying. Dye said that... sort of:

"Strata is a term that refers to layers of rock. Stratigraphy is the study of those layers of rocks."

That's true, we guess; though it might have helped if somewhere Dye had mentioned either sedimentary or volcanic rocks – but she didn't. Worse, from that point forward Felicia's notion of those layers became somewhat confused. For instance, she told her readers that,

"This is often evidenced when a body of rock appears to have bands running around it. These bands are actually sediments that have been compacted over time.  Stratigraphers believe that each of those bands represents a period."

With the possible exception of banded iron formation, geologists very rarely use the word "band."¹ We guess that's what happens when someone ignorant of the science starts amokking in her thesaurus. And while we're at it; we can safely say that stratigraphers do not "believe that each of those bands represents a period," especially given the specific meaning of "period" to a geologist.

Dye went on to misinform in a number of other statements, including but not limited to,

• "The study of stratigraphy can be used to do more than determine the age of the planet. " – in reality, radioactive dating is used to "determine the age of the planet."
• "To determine what they need to know, stratigraphers study rock samples called cores. These are slices of Earth composed of numerous strata." – "Slices"? Not likely... that's not to mention that Dye blathered about field studies earlier on, which is definitely not the same as studying a core.
• "...scientists use modern methods such as seismic technology to obtain information about the Earth’s core." – No, that's not what's studied with seismic technology...
• "...the law of superposition,... says that the lowest layers of soils are the oldest." – All this talk about rocks and now Dye is babbling about "soils"?

So much for the "wisdom" of this particular GEEK, not to mention the failure of her "editor" Heather Bailey to do the necessary research to correct this bullshit. Too late for that, though, since the dumb-namic duo just combined for a Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ Except perhaps in references to the Rolling Stones and other rock bands... – snort –

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