What is a stratigraphic column?
This is going to be a long answer, so pull up a chair and get comfortable. While it’s fun to look at the earth and try to figure out what has happened in a particular place, one of the most important things that geologists do is to attempt to combine these bits of local information into a regional model of earth history. This is much tougher, but in the long run well worth the effort. Several steps/processes are involved in any attempt to unravel earth history. It all starts with the rocks. Lithology is the study of bedrock: the rocks which occur in a specific location. While this obviously includes igneous and metamorphic rocks, sedimentary rocks are very important for several reasons: many of the classical laws of geology relate to the accumulation of sediments, and the formation of sedimentary rocks; and they may contain fossils which aid in determining how old they are. Therefore sedimentary rocks can also help in our understanding of both sequence and timing. As fate would have it
