early ideas of time

• William Smith made the first geological maps.
• William Smith discovered that older rock contained more primitive forms of life.
• William Smith's discovery, the law of faunal succession, states that fossils occur in a definite, unchanging sequence.
• Facies is the characteristics of a rock of a given age that are produced by its environment which allow them to be distinguished from rocks in an adjacent environment.
• Lithofacies are the physical and chemical characteristics of the rock - mineral comp, grain size, sorting etc.
• Biofacies are the palaeontological characteristics of the rock.
• Facies association is a group of facies that occur together and represent one depositional environment.