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Introduction to Historical Geology

  • Page ID
    27076
    • Chris Johnson, Callan Bentley, Karla Panchuk, Matt Affolter, Karen Layou, Shelley Jaye, Russ Kohrs, Paul Inkenbrandt, Cam Mosher, Brian Ricketts, and Charlene Estrada
    • Maricopa Open Digital Press
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    Historical geology is a discipline that uses the principles and methods of geology to reconstruct the geological history of Earth. Historical geology examines the vastness of geologic time, measured in billions of years, and investigates changes in the Earth, gradual and sudden, over this deep time. It focuses on geological processes, such as plate tectonics, that have changed the Earth's surface and subsurface over time and the use of methods including stratigraphy, structural geology, paleontology, and sedimentology to tell the sequence of these events. It also focuses on the evolution of life during different time periods in the geologic time scale.


    This page titled Introduction to Historical Geology is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Chris Johnson, Callan Bentley, Karla Panchuk, Matt Affolter, Karen Layou, Shelley Jaye, Russ Kohrs, Paul Inkenbrandt, Cam Mosher, Brian Ricketts, and Charlene Estrada (Maricopa Open Digital Press) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.