How Do Unconformities Mark Missing Time?
Another essential concept in stratigraphy is the unconformity. An unconformity is a surface upon which no new sediments were deposited for a long geologic interval. During this interval, erosion may have occurred before more deposits of sediments covered the surface. An unconformity marks a “gap in geologic time” because the rocks below and above it come from widely separated geologic times. There are no sedimentary strata to record what happened during the intervening interval. Instead, there is just an unconformity, a buried erosional or non-depositional surface. Unconformities separate chapters in the geologic history of a given region. For instance, an orogenic episode (a long geologic episode of mountain building) may finally come to end and the eroded mountains may be buried beneath a new sequence of sediments. A major unconformity would mark the change from the building up of mountains to the wearing down of those same mountains and the subsequent blanketing of the area with sed
