Abstract
This paper examines the emergence of a new approach to stratigraphic complexity, first in geology and then, following its creative appropriation, in paleobiology. The approach was associated with a set of models that together transformed stratigraphic geology in the decades following 1970. These included the influential models of depositional sequences developed by Peter Vail and others at Exxon. Transposed into paleobiology, they gave researchers new resources for studying the incompleteness of the fossil record and for removing biases imposed by the processes of sedimentary accumulation. In addition, they helped reconfigure the cultural landscape of paleobiology, consolidating a growing emphasis on fieldwork and eroding the barrier that had been erected in the 1970s between “paleontology” and “paleobiology.” This paper traces these developments, paying special attention to the simulation models of stratigraphic paleobiologist Steven Holland. It also considers how the integration of sequence and event stratigraphy and paleobiology has begun to influence long-running discussions of incompleteness and bias in the fossil record.
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Notes
The paleobiological revolution is the name given to a series of developments that saw the emergence of paleobiology as a distinct area of study “centered around the quantitative analysis and interpretation of the history of life” (Sepkoski 2013, p. 402). It is usually dated from about 1970 to 1985 and associated with American invertebrate paleontologists like Gould (1941–2002), David Raup (1933–2015), J. John (Jack) Sepkoski, Jr. (1948–1999), Steven Stanley (1944–), and Thomas Schopf (1939–1984).
Sequence stratigraphy has been almost entirely ignored by historians. The only historian who seems to have noticed it is David Oldroyd (2006). However, its influence on stratigraphic practice has been immense. One commenter has gone so far as to compare this influence to that of plate tectonics on structural geology (Mitchum 2003). Doubtless this is an exaggeration, but even more sober commenters agree that its influence has been pervasive: “Modern stratigraphy is dominated by the study of ‘sequence stratigraphy’” (Miall and Miall 2002, p. 307). A secondary goal of this paper is therefore to draw attention to this crucial development in the recent history of the earth sciences.
Similar criticisms were voiced by German-speaking paleontologists prior to World War Two (Rieppel 2013). A leading figure, the Austrian paleontologist and National Socialist Othenio Abel (1875–1946), even spoke of “the battle to free paleontology from the shackles of geology” (Abel 1929, p. 153), although there is little evidence to suggest that the paleobiology of the 1970s was directly influenced by Abel’s Paläobiologie.
Along with exhibiting this temporal pattern, many stratigraphers expected the rock record to resemble a layer cake in its physical structure as well. This is a more literal, and nowadays universally condemned, application of the layer cake metaphor.
Facies is a Latin word meaning “face” or “external appearance” (Teichert 1958). In geological usage, it means a sedimentary deposit characterized by a set of features that formed in a particular depositional environment, like a coastal plain or reef front.
As the paleontologist and stratigrapher Carlton Brett (1952–) summarized this view, “if a rock unit looks the same in two different places it must be of different ages” (Brett 2000, p. 496).
The middle of the twentieth century was an exceedingly complicated time in the history of stratigraphy, which saw the consolidation of “pure” lithostratigraphy (the project of delineating and correlating rock units based entirely on lithological characteristics) as well as the expansion of petrography and process sedimentology (Seibold and Seibold 2002; Steel and Milliken 2013). (Petrography refers to the descriptive study of rocks, especially under the microscope, whereas process sedimentology refers to the actualistic study of sedimentary bodies and structures.) This section outlines developments in lithostratigraphy to the neglect of these other critical areas (but see Dott 1978 for a complementary account).
This is not to say that biostratigraphic (rock) units were ever explicitly defined as chronostratigraphic (time) units, although in practice they were frequently treated as such (Hedberg 1965). It is just to say that, in the mid-twentieth century, fossils provided the key line of evidence for chronostratigraphic dating.
For example, here is the “grandfather” of American paleobiology, Norman Newell (1919–2004), writing in 1962: “As stratigraphic work in the United States has been increasingly directed to local and minor stratigraphic units there has been a growing emphasis on physical criteria and less attention to fossils… This decline in stratigraphic paleontology has resulted in widespread lack of appreciation of fossils as indices of time and environment, and many stratigraphers relegate fossils to a minor role in classifying and correlating strata” (Newell 1962, p. 592). Ironically, Newell had earlier been keen to articulate worries about the subordination of (invertebrate) paleontology to stratigraphy (Sepkoski 2012, pp. 57–59).
Again, the chronostratigraphic layer cake should be distinguished from the view that the rock record physically resembles a layer cake. The latter analogy, Ager thought, “just will not do” (Ager 1973, p. 75).
These event beds have been likened to frosting layers in a well-marbled cake (Brett 2000). The implication is that even if the cake layers (local facies) are diachronous, stratigraphers can still use the frosting layers to divide the cake into roughly time-parallel units.
A craton is a large and ancient block of crust that comprises the nucleus of a continent (Kay 1974). Cratonic regions are the regions overlying cratons, which contain piles of younger rocks. What Sloss and colleagues showed was that the cratonic region of North America could be subdivided into four “unconformity-bounded successions”: thick packages of strata inferred to have a shared origin in tectonic movements (Sloss et al. 1949). This number was later increased to six in a paper that many regard as the earliest example of the modern “sequence” concept in action (Sloss 1963; see also Sloss 1988).
Seismic reflection data is often presented in the form of seismic [reflection] profiles: visualizations of reflected acoustic energy that picture subsurface structures to depths of tens of kilometers. The innovation that stimulated Vail’s interest was the ability of computer-aided reflection seismology to image subsurface stratification patterns at high levels of resolution (Sloss 1988; see also Oldroyd 2006, pp. 146–147).
This work took place in the 1961.
The extent to which seismic reflectors correspond to chronostratigraphic horizons became an object of controversy in subsequent decades. The most acute point of controversy concerned whether depositional sequences are indeed “geochronologic units” with potentially global validity (Vail et al. 1977b, p. 96). Vail and colleagues argued that they are, and used the postulate of globally synchronous sequence boundaries to construct sea-level curves as a template for dating and correlation (Vail 1977b, c). Critics raised a host of objections: for example, that this application of the sequence model gives too little weight to factors other than global sea-level change in generating sedimentary cycles (Miall 1992; Poulsen et al. 1998). Significantly for the present account, these critics were largely agreed about the utility of the sequence model itself. What they objected to was the notion that sequences are produced by glacially-controlled changes in sea-level, and that this makes them globally correlable (Dewey and Pitman 1998; Dickinson 2003).
Both these applications were ultimately geared toward providing a global framework for petroleum exploration, which would reduce costs from exploratory drilling and increase production profits.
AAPG stands for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. AAPG Memoir 26 is a collection of twenty-four papers given at a 1975 APPG research symposium, including a series of eleven papers authored by Vail and colleagues on the stratigraphic interpretation of reflection records. For an analysis of its reception and rapid uptake by corporate and academic geologists, see Miall and Miall (2002).
These sequences are considerably smaller than the continent-scale sequences described by Sloss.
To say that a surface is chronostratigraphically significant is to say that all the rocks overlying it are everywhere younger than all the rocks underlying it (which is different from saying that the surface is isochronous, or that it represents a time line). Because of this, chronostratigraphically significant surfaces are often used in local correlation.
More precisely, accommodation [space] is defined as the vertical envelope between the sea surface and the basement of rocks beneath the sedimentary pile, which is available for sedimentation (Jervey 1988). Changes in accommodation reflect the sum of changes in eustatic sea-level change and tectonism, with rising seas and tectonic subsidence increasing accommodation, and falling seas and tectonic elevation decreasing accommodation.
A typical parasequence is between one and ten meters thick and represents tens to hundreds of thousands of years of elapsed time. By contrast, depositional sequences tend to be thicker (comprising multiple stacked parasequences) and represent millions of years of elapsed time (but see Christie-Blick and Driscoll 1995 for complications).
Sequence boundaries typically represent significant periods of time in which no sediment accumulates. But they are not the only chronostratigraphically significant surfaces in a sequence, and other surfaces, like the maximum flooding surface, are also associated with periods of highly reduced deposition.
This is no place to review the development of sequence models since the 1970s. Suffice it to say that the basic model of Vail and others was repeatedly amended as higher-resolution seismic data became available, and as the importance of factors beyond eustatic sea-level change became more widely accepted (Miall and Miall 2001; Embry et al. 2007). A major development was the ability to apply sequence stratigraphy directly to outcrops and well-logs in the absence of seismic reflection data (Van Wagoner et al. 1990). Also important was the development of numerical models of sedimentary accumulation, which helped to clarify the internal structure of sequences and the meaning of key surfaces (Jervey 1988; see also Posamentier and Vail 1988; Van Wagoner et al. 1988). All this was crucial in fashioning sequence stratigraphy into “an entirely new way of practicing [stratigraphic geology]” (Miall and Miall 2001, p. 322).
This process received a great impetus from the controversial Alvarez hypothesis, which sparked renewed interest in the phenomenon of mass extinction (Alvarez et al. 1980; see also Sepkoski 2021). Although the most famous early studies of mass extinction were computer-based (e.g., Raup and Sepkoski 1982), other self-identifying paleobiologists studied mass extinction by taking to the field (e.g., Ward 1983).
Taphonomy refers broadly to the study of “how organic remains are incorporated into the rock record and the fate of these materials after burial” (Behrensmeyer and Kidwell 1985, p. 105). It has been understudied by historians, but cursory historical treatments can be found in Olsen (1980), Behrensmeyer and Kidwell (1985) and Cadée (1991).
Steven Holland (1962–) is an American paleontologist and stratigrapher, who completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago under Susan Kidwell in 1990. I have elected to focus on Holland’s 1995 modeling study because it exemplifies the way paleobiologists appropriated resources from the new stratigraphy for distinctively paleobiological ends. But any number of studies from this period might equally have supplied a focus for this section (for example, Kauffman 1984; Kidwell 1986, 1989; MacLeod 1991; Brett and Baird 1992).
To understand this section, it is not necessary to understand in detail how sequence stratigraphy narrates the process of sedimentary basin filling. Nevertheless, here is a quick synopsis. At the base of each sequence is a surface known as the sequence boundary. This forms when relative sea-level is falling. During this interval, no new sedimentation occurs, so sequence boundaries correspond to gaps in the rock record. When relative sea-level begins to rise, deposition is renewed and parasequences stack seaward in a net shallowing pattern. These parasequences form the lowstand systems tract (LST), so named because it sits at a topographically lower position than the rest of the sequence. As relative sea-level rise accelerates such that the rate of sea-level rise exceeds the rate of sedimentation, the pattern of stacking is reversed and successive parasequences exhibit a net deepening trend. This set of parasequences comprises the transgressive systems tract (TST). Separating the LST and the TST is a flooding surface called the transgressive surface, which marks the point at which seaward stacking is replaced by landward stacking, and is often associated with reduced sedimentation (a phenomenon known as condensation). Other flooding surfaces within the TST may also exhibit condensation. Finally, as the rate of sea-level rise begins to slow, parasequences again begin to stack seaward in a net shallowing trend. At this juncture there is another flooding surface, the maximum flooding surface, which records the greatest water depth in the sequence and is often highly condensed. The parasequences deposited atop the maximum flooding surface comprise the highstand systems tract (HST). These are bounded at their top by the sequence boundary, which, again, forms when relative sea-level is falling.
Witness the gibe in a 1969 issue of Nature that “Scientists in general might be excused for thinking that… most paleontologists have staked out a square mile for their life’s work” (Anonymous 1969, p. 903).
Rudwick made a similar observation in his (2018), especially pp. 504–507.
The acronym SEPM refers to the original name of the Society for Sedimentary Geology: the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists.
Here it is worth noting that all major figures in 1970s-era paleobiology were trained in traditional paleontological methods. Even Jack Sepkoski, the archetype of the “new model paleontologist,” wrote a dissertation titled, “Stratigraphy and Paleoecology of Dresbachian (Upper Cambrian) Formations in Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota”—hardly the quantitative work he later became known for (Sepkoski 2005).
This traded on the perception that stratigraphy had become bogged down in minutiae (see “Stratigraphy After 1970”), or as the outspoken stratigrapher P.D. Krynine (1902–1964) is reported to have said, that stratigraphy had seen a “complete triumph of terminology over facts and common sense” (Folk and Ferm 1966, p. 853).
By “trading zone,” I mean a site of substantive and reciprocal communication characterized by an exchange of materials and ideas. For a more explicit treatment, see Collins et al. (2007).
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank David Sepkoski, Steven Holland, Scott Lidgard, Douglas Erwin, Marco Tamborini, Alan Love, Bennett McNulty, and Jos Uffink for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Jean-Baptiste Grodwohl and an anonymous reviewer for comments and criticisms that greatly improved the manuscript, and Betty Smocovitis for her editorial insights.
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Dresow, M. Biased, Spasmodic, and Ridiculously Incomplete: Sequence Stratigraphy and the Emergence of a New Approach to Stratigraphic Complexity in Paleobiology, 1973–1995. J Hist Biol 56, 419–454 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09720-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09720-0