Sequence stratigraphy: Basic elements, concepts, and terminology

Abstract

The elements of “sequence stratigraphy” had been around long before it acquired its modern name, and those elements had their own terminology, familiar to most geologists and geophysicists (depositional cycles, unconformities, beds and bed sets, laminae and laminae sets, etc.). The publication of Exxon’s stratigraphic technology with its own unique language at once both excited the geologic community and irritated many who disliked the proliferation of new terminology for long‐held concepts. With time the objections faded, perhaps because as the new language became more widely used it became more familiar, and perhaps because the new language signaled new ideas, and it was a useful way to distinguish new from old.