A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1068 entries
unconformity
A gap in the geological record — a surface between rock layers where time is missing. Below the line, one world; above it, another, separated by millions of years of erosion or non-deposition that left no trace. An unconformity is the earth’s silence — the ages it chose not to record.
Etymology
English un- + conformity. The layers do not conform — the younger rock does not follow continuously from the older.
Notes
The Great Unconformity at the base of the Grand Canyon more than a billion years. Those days you don’t write in your journal? Also an unconformity.