Twenty five years ago, Dott provided perspectives on the past, present and future of sedimentary geology. He suggested following the 1960s were the “Golden Age” of sedimentary geology, followed by the “great stimulus and integration across disciplines” provided by plate tectonics and seismic stratigraphy in the 1970s, the late 1980s were a period of “model mania.” He expressed skepticism, noting that “…models must be made but not believed.” Sagaciously, he predicted that “mudrocks -- nature's single most abundant sediment – will finally come into their own. Pedogenesis and climate should also, at last, assume deservedly prominent roles in sedimentology.” Yet, his vision of the future suggested “…at last it should be possible to construct true quantitative and predictive models that can evaluate stochastic and deterministic as well as episodic and periodic phenomena at all scales from local events to global eustasy.”
Editor’s note: “It´s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” — Niels Bohr
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue: a hindsight and foresight of sedimentary geology by Robert H. Dott
Journal of Sedimentary Research, March 1988, v. 58, p. 358-364.
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