Overview

Stratigraphy, the study of rock strata, emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century for both scientific and economic reasons. Although William Smith was the first to use fossils to trace a long series of strata over a large area, his practical rather than scientific approach meant that his work was not influential outside of England. Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart, however, were well established in the scientific community, and their slightly later research became the basis for most future work on fossils and geological history. Nevertheless, William Smith is usually remembered as the father of English geology and as a pioneer of stratigraphy.

Background

In the late eighteenth...