Visean and Dinantian

According to an earlier blog on the Carboniferous the Dinantian is a series and the Visean a stage. According to the BGS book The Pennines and adjacent areas (p16) the Dinantian is a subsystem and the Visean a series which is divided into stages:

I am more inclined to believe the BGS over Wikipedia!

Whichever is true the geology of the Peak District is often described as Dinantian, Namurian and Westphalian which is a mixture of subsystem and series (on the BGS criteria) with the occasional mention of the Visean. Geologists always seem out to confuse.

 

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System v Period

There seems to be a confusing mixing of chronologies with Carboniferous being both a Period and System. According to Wikipedia the TIME (geochronology) divisions are as follows:

Eon, era, period, epoch, age

The ROCK (chronostratigraphy) divisions which correspond to them are:

Eonthem, erathem, system, series, stage

Confusing....

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Carboniferous period - timescales

The backbone of our understanding of the geology of the Peak District will be built around the chronostratigraphic chart of the Carboniferous. Here is an extract showing the relevant data from the latest (2012) version of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart:

Confusingly these international names are not the same as the European Carboniferous system (from Wikipedia):

As all the books I have are about UK geology it is probably best to stick to the European system.