Prologue: the founding of the Cretaceous System

Abstract

Following the publication of country-wide geological maps by William Smith and George Bellas Greenhough, Jean Baptiste Julien d'Omalius d'Halloy embarked on the geological mapping of France and the adjacent areas of the Low Countries and Northern Italy, publishing his map in 1822. In the legend of that map was the rock unit identified as ‘Terrain Crétacé’ and that was the birth of the Cretaceous System that we still use today. During the remainder of the nineteenth century, many geoscientists in Europe, and elsewhere, worked on the Cretaceous strata and – over time – generated our present understanding of the longest period in the Phanerozoic. This includes luminaries such as Alcide d'Orbigny, Charles Darwin, Edmond Hébert, Charles Barrois, Alfred Jukes-Browne and Arthur Rowe. Gradually, the appreciation for Cretaceous climates, sea levels, oceanic anoxia, palaeontology and biogeography expanded, and many of these topics will be covered in contributions to this Special Publication that celebrates the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Cretaceous System.