Historical and Methodological Background

Abstract

Many observations and hypotheses regarding regional and global changes in sea level, and the ordering of stratigraphic successions into predictable packages, were made early in the twentieth century. The word eustatic was first proposed for global changes of sea level by Suess (1885; English translation: 1906). He recognized that sea-level change could be determined by plotting the extent of marine transgression over continental areas, and by studying the changes in water depths indicated by successions of sediments and faunas. Observations, models and hypotheses regarding regional stratigraphy and the processes driving subsidence and sedimentation were made by such scientists as Lyell, Grabau, Chamberlin, Blackwelder, Ulrich, and Barrell. The North-American mid-continent cyclothems are a particularly interesting case of cyclic sedimentation. Workers such as Wanless, Weller, Moore and Shepard began studying these in the 1930s. The reader is referred to Dott (1992a) and the memoir of which this paper is a part, for fascinating descriptions of the early controversies, many of them having a very modern flavour.