Stratigraphy, palaeogeography: a fruitful permanent dialogue

Abstract

The 70’s were a real turning point for the palaeogeography. The plate-tectonics theory was verified. Many believe that it was a geophysics success. It is not fully correct. Most of hypotheses have been achieved by geologists dealing with stratigraphy and the plate-tectonics theory can be regarded as the geometrical expression of the continental drift proposed by Wegener. Nevertheless the kinematics, daughter of the plate-tectonics theory, is a beautiful tool to reconstruct the successive geographies of our planet. But as soon as we say “successive”, “evolution”, “event”, “correlation”, “movement”, “speed”, we need a time scale and reference is made to stratigraphy. Thus a palaeogeographic map being a synthesis of the geological events last in a time slice, it needs kinematics and stratigraphy. The combination of these two geosciences is a fruitful permanent dialogue. It reveals the stronger points and the weakness of the two partners. It leads to reduce the uncertainties. Keywords: Stratigraphy, palaeogeography, palaeoenvironment