Abstract
Abstract The measurement of geological time and the construction of a geologic time-scale composed of standard stratigraphic divisions based on rock sequences and calibrated in years has long attracted the attention of geologists and has done much to provoke international co-operation. Thus the Committee for the Measurement of Geological Time, set up in December 1923 by the National Research Council of the USA almost immediately attracted the co-operation of the pioneers concerned with the dating of rocks by radioactive decay and served as a world-wide forum through to the 1950s. The first steps to establish a chronostratigraphic scale were taken much earlier at the International Geological Congress held in Bologna (Italy) in 1881 and both of these activities are now co-ordinated through the various Sub-commissions of the Commission on Stratigraphy of the IUGS. Progress in nuclear physics and the development of new tools for isotope research saw the effective birth of isotope geology in 1950 (Rankama 1954) and the following decade saw a major data explosion in this subject. Much of this early work was essentially geochronometric though not necessarily directed towards the establishment of a geologic time-scale. However, the possibility of improving the time-scale, at that time the virtual brain child of one man — Arthur Holmes — resulted in the holding of an interdisciplinary symposium by the Geological Society of London, and the subsequent publication in 1964 of The Phanerozoic Time-Scale followed by a supplement in 1971. Important aspects of these influencial publications were the inclusions of over 300
Published Version
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