Time Scales

1. BASICS OF DYNAMIC GEOLOGY

Dynamic geology does not begin with the Big Bang 15 billion years ago, which is a bit

remote when it comes to applications to petroleum geology. Sedimentary geology is con-

cerned, however, with at least the most recent billions of years in which identifiable geolog-

ical processes have left an interpretable trace on the earth's surface. For most sedimentary

basins, and especially those of petroleum geology, the portion of geological time of interest

to us is the last 540 million years, though this is simplifying matters because some Precam-

brian basins are notable exceptions, for specific reasons. Figure 1.7 recapitulates this geo-

logical time scale, which will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4. This time

dimension is basic to geology, of course, as one of its objectives is to reconstruct earth his-

tory.

Several remarks are in order here:

• Time is a measurable quantity. We will be speaking of sediments deposited over

10 000 years; or rocks dating from 2 billion or just 20 million years; granites laid in

place 140 million years ago; or deformations that occurred between 65 and 60 million

years ago, for example. We are always trying to obtain absolute dating by various

techniques (see Chapter 4). This is the task of chronostratigraphy.

• Often enough, there is no way of defining such a chronology with absolute precision,

and we then have to use relative dating. For example, sediments can be dated by their

deposition before, during, or after some major event or minor landmark, such as rifting

or folding.

• Time scales will vary considerably depending on the object being studied. In seismol-

ogy, quakes are recorded on the scale of a second, while it is the daily tidal cycle that

will be considered when working on the formation of deposits on the continental shelf.

Or if we are trying to interpret glacial-interglacial cycles, the orderof magnitude will

be different again, ranging from several thousand years to several tens of thousands. If

we are reconstructing the evolution of the Gulf of Gascony or the Alps, the time scale

is in millions and tens of millions of years (Fig. 1.8).

We will return later to the idea of brief events such as the eruption of a volcano or the
impact of a meteorite. These events are practically instantaneous on a geological scale, and

fall within a history of continuous evolution guided by cycles at different time scales, rang-

ing from tides to the establishment of a lithospheric convection cell.

The idea of time is still capital in seismology and experimental seismic, where wave

arrival times, velocities ~"ld slowness, are calculated.