RE: Geological timescale

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: Jeff Hecht [mailto:jeff@jeffhecht.com]
>
> At 8:28 AM -0400 5/14/04, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. wrote:
> >
> >>  And the Vendian has been abandoned
> >>  http://www.stratigraphy.org/prec.htm. :.-(
> >
> >That was a decision I had already heard about.  Bother.  I still prefer
> >Vendian to Ediacaran.
>
> Is there a reason why this Precambrian part of the geologic time
> scale does not appear in the pdf version?

Don't know.  The Nature short article does have the Precambrian.

> And can anyone explain why a press release I just received says "The
> Ediacaran Period is the first new rung in the ladder of geological
> time
> periods to be adopted in 120 years?"

Hmmm...  Well, if by "periods" they meant "Periods", they might be correct.
There certainly were some new geochronologic units adopted during the late
19th and 20th Century (Paleocene, Holocene, Paleogene, Neogene, Proterozoic,
Archean, Hadean, Neoproterozoic, Mesoproterozoic, Paleoproterozoic, etc.)

> Is the Vendian being redefined, or scrapped?

Off to the dustbins of history...

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796