Sedimentation in the past has often been very rapid indeed and very spasmodic. This may be called the Phenomenon of the Catastrophic Nature of the Stratigraphical Record.

Changes, cyclic or otherwise, within the solar system or within our galaxy, would seem to be the easy and incontrovertible solution for everything that I have found remarkable in the stratigraphical record.

It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student....have now been debunked.

Let us make an arbitrary decision (by a show of hands if necessary) to define the base of every stratigraphical unit in a selected section. This may be called the Principle of the Golden Spike. Then stratigraphical nomenclature can be forgotten and we can get on with the real work of stratigraphy, which is correlation and interpretation.

Experts always tend to obscure the obvious.