O. Catuneanu 2006. Principles of Sequence Stratigraphy. ix + 375 pp. Amsterdam, Boston, Heidelberg: Elsevier. Price Euro 80.00, £55.00, US $86.95 (hard covers). ISBN 0 444 51568 2.

Abstract

After a contentious and often turbulent start, sequence stratigraphy is now widely accepted as an additional tool in the kit of sedimentary geologists striving to interpret the record of sediments and sedimentary rocks. Elements of what we now understand as sequence stratigraphy had been rumbling along in the background for some time before the explosion that started to appear in the scientific literature in the late 1970s. It is easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to find key elements of the concepts in papers published during the 1950s and 1960s but we had to wait until the 1970s for these elements to be organized into a coherent framework. That this phase took place largely within the confines of a commercial company (Exxon) using seismic and related data that were far from being in the public domain imparts a very distinctive character to the development of the concepts. Much of the early criticism of sequence stratigraphy relates to this point. Some also erroneously saw sequence stratigraphy as an attempt to replace existing, established approaches. In fact it is a complement to these approaches and by reviving the importance of time in relation to …