Layers and gaps: the nature of the stratigraphical record

The fundamentals of stratigraphy have been well understood for more than three centuries and there is now a detailed stratigraphical record reaching back more than one billion years. But this sedimentary rock record is everywhere unpredictably incomplete and yet everywhere similar in its layered character. Computer analyses now reveal the fundamental nature of these two aspects of the record: gaps and layers are governed by simple, seemingly universal, laws that operate regardless of age and sediment type.