Stratigraphers have agreed – finally – on a 'global boundary stratotype section and point' for the base of the Jurassic, reports Dwain Eldred
Geoscientist Online 27 July 2011
The Jurassic Period—probably the most well-known period of the geological Time Scale—will be formally defined for the first time when a 'Golden Spike' is pounded into a rock outcrop high in the Alps of western Austria on Saturday, August 20.
Image:
The Triassic/Jurassic GSSP, nr Innsbruck, Austria. Photo courtesy, Nicol Morton.
This dedication ceremony, of the so-called “” (GSSP) is the final step in the tortuous official process through which the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) of the International Union of Geological Sciences formally defines units of the Geologic Time Scale. Thereafter the GSSP becomes recognized as a global geostandard.
The ICS has placed more than 60 Golden Spikes around the globe to mark a site representing where rocks and fossils transition between two significant places in geological time. This, their latest spike, will be placed at the Kuhjoch section, located near the village of Hinterriss, about 25 km north east of Innsbruck, Austria - defines the base of the Jurassic System of rocks and the transition from the underlying Triassic.