Talk:Lithostratigraphy

--EAGow 13:10, 27 May 2006 (UTC) The applicable stratigraphy section should just be put into the Stratigraphy article. They dont just relate to Lithostratigraphy. Lithostratigraphy could just be turned into a redirect to the Stratigraphy article and the lithostratigraphy section of that expanded.

Article is not describing lithostratigraphy

I agree with EAGow, the article is actually describing stratigraphy and not lithostratigraphy. Compare the two definitions from the USGS website:

Lithostratigraphy: Branch of stratigraphy dealing with the study of units of rock. Each unit is composed of a body of rock which is dominated by a certain lithology or similar color, mineralogic composition, and grain size.

Stratigraphy: Branch of geology concerned with the study of the formation, composition, ordering in time, and arrangement in space of stratified rocks.

Whereas stratigraphy deals with stratified rocks, which is what the article, in essence, is describing, in lithostratigraphy units are defined by the rock's petrology. Therefore, there does not need to be a stratigraphic contact, but there could, yet there could also be a thrust contact etc.

Cheers — Preceding unsigned comment added by GeoJojo (talk • contribs) 08:15, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I am unsure of your point. If stratigraphy deals with stratified rocks, then why wouldn't lithostratigraphy, a sub-discipline of stratigraphy, also deal with stratified rocks? Doesn't lithostratigraphy start with the principles that formations are laid down horizontally youngest on top of oldest even if they later moved. Isn't it the stratigraphy of lithostratigraphy that tells you where there is a thrust fault? I am not saying the present article couldn't use some work, but wasn't EAGow's May 2006 comment effectively against a completely different article? IveGoneAway (talk) 02:55, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi, lithostratigraphy is not restricted to stratified rocks, it can also describe a column of igneous or metamorphic rocks. See the "international stratigraphic guide" (): "A lithostratigraphic unit may consist of sedimentary, or igneous, or metamorphic rocks. Lithostratigraphic units are defined and recognized by observable physical features and not by their inferred age, the time span they represent, inferred geologic history, or manner of formation. The geographic extent of a lithostratigraphic unit is controlled entirely by the continuity and extent of its diagnostic lithologic features." The definition"(...) formations are laid down horizontally youngest on top (...)" refers to sediments. However, this does not work for lithostratigraphic units in metamorphic terranes, where all primary structures have been obliterated, or igneous columns of rock, where no horizontal stratification may have existed to start with. Moreover, in lithostratigraphy a younger rock needs not to be structurally above an older rock, the sequence can be tectonically stacked or inverted. Nonetheless, lithostratigraphic units can be mapped out in metamorphic terranes and are in any case "the basic units of geologic mapping".

In a way, lithostratigraphy is "more basic" than stratigraphy (sensu lato), because it can be applied to any body of rock, whereas stratigraphy, as described in this article, is very much focused on sediments. The reason that lithostratigraphy is referred to as a sub-discipline of stratigraphy is mainly historic.

Cheers GeoJojo (talk) 12:16, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

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