Macrostratigraphy: Insights into Cyclic and Secular Evolution of the Earth-Life System
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Rocks in Earth's crust are formed, modified, and destroyed in response to myriad interactions between the solid Earth (tectonics, geodynamics), the fluid Earth (ocean-atmosphere, cryosphere), and the living Earth (evolution, biochemistry). As such, the geological record is an integrator of geological, biological, and climatological processes and their histories. Here we review contrasting perceptions of the processes that govern the formation and destruction of the geological record, beginning with the relationship between macroevolutionary patterns in the fossil and sedimentary rock records and culminating with contrasting models of rock cycling. Using the approach of macrostratigraphy, we present an integrated summary of the quantity-age properties of rocks in continental and oceanic crust. The predominant process signal in the rock quantity-age distribution in continental crust is one of episodic growth, whereas in oceanic crust it is one of continual destruction. Relatively abrupt shifts in the dominant locus of sediment deposition, from fast-cycling oceanic crust to long-term continental reservoirs, and attendant expansions and contractions in the area of crust that is emergent, are correlated in timing and magnitude with shifts in the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere and major macroevolutionary transitions in the biosphere. The most recent of possibly two such first-ordertransitions occurred at the start of the Phanerozoic and is marked by a prominent preserved geomorphic surface known as the Great Unconformity. ▪ Macrostratigraphy uses the bulk characteristics of the rock record to probe the evolution of the Earth system. ▪ Quantifying the creation and destruction of rock units can illuminate the long-term evolution of continents and the life that inhabits them.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".