A review on the definitions of terms of sedimentary facies

Abstract

In recent years, in some papers and manuscripts published in and submitted to the Journal of Palaeogeography (Chinese Edition and English Edition), the authors named the rocks or rock types as “microfacies” or “lithofacies”, named the microfeatures in thin-sections under microscope as “microfacies”, and named the macrofeatures of rocks as “macrofacies”. I wrote two short papers “Words of the Editor-in-Chief — Rocks are not microfacies” (Feng, Journal of Palaeogeography 19(5):II 2017) and “Words of the Editor-in-Chief — Rocks are not lithofacies” (Feng, Journal of Palaeogeography 20(3):452–452, 2018) which were in Chinese and published in the Journal of Palaeogeography (Chinese Edition). However, they did not attract much attention of readers in China and outside China. In addition, in 1980s, some Chinese sedimentologists proposed “subfacies” and “microfacies” based on the macrofeatures of rocks from outcrops and drilling cores. However, the definition of this “microfacies” is totally different from the “microfacies” proposed by foreign sedimentologists in 1940s based on the microfeatures in thin-sections under microscope.These problems appeared repeatedly and forced me, as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Palaeogeography (Chinese Edition and English Edition), to observe the policy of “A hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend” , to write new papers “A review on the definitions of terms of sedimentary facies” both in Chinese and in English, to clarify the definitions of the terms of sedimentary facies, i.e., “facies”, “lithofacies”, two “microfacies”, “macrofacies”, “subfacies”, etc. I hope that the new papers will attract attention of readers worldwide and they can write papers and participate in the discussion and contending of these problems, strive for getting some common understandings, and therefore promote the progress and development of sedimentology and palaeogeography.