Paris Basin: succession of strata by their fossils (Cuvier and Brongniart)
Cuenca de París: sucesión de estratos por sus fósiles (Cuvier y Brongniart)
- Date
- 1808-1811 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, Île-de-France, France
- Credited to
- Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Cuvier and Brongniart mapped the terrain around Paris and showed that marine and freshwater layers alternated with distinct fossil faunas, so fossils could be used to order and correlate strata. They arrived at the method independently of William Smith.
The summary was read in 1808 and the memoir appeared in 1811; the enlarged edition with map dates from 1822. Smith had been working since the 1790s without publishing his method.
What it led to
- continental biostratigraphy and the succession of faunas in each layer
- the Paris Basin Tertiary as a model for the rest of Europe