Abstract
ONE of the fundamental principles of geology—‘Stille's legacy’1—is the concept that there is a wide contemporaneity of geological events, both tectonic and sedimentary. The concept received notable attention 25 yr ago and raised a scientific controversy2. It is now of interest again because of the present tendency to assume as a causal mechanism of mountain building the relative motions between plates. On the basis of geological evidence it has been shown3 that the diastrophic events of the western Mediterranean do not occur at the same time in the different mountain chains, because collisions between plates are diachronous. Detailed stratigraphical analysis of the units within the Maghrebian Chain4 (from Gibraltar to Calabrian Arc) indicates that, in addition, the initiation of geological events varies from place to place in the same orogen5.
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WEZEL, F. Diachronism of depositional and diastrophic events. Nature 253, 255–257 (1975). https://doi.org/10.1038/253255a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/253255a0
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