geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...

, a diastem (plural: diastems) is a short interruption in sedimentation with little or no erosion. They can also be described as very short

unconformities An unconformity is a buried erosional or non-depositional surface separating two rock masses or strata of different ages, indicating that sediment deposition was not continuous. In general, the older layer was exposed to erosion for an interval o ...

(more precisely as very short paraconformities).In 1917 Joseph barrel of USA estimated the rate of deposition of succession from the available radiometric age. His accumulation showed that the strata accumulation was at the rate of thousands of years per foot rather than hundreds. He stated that diastems are universal in sedimentary rocks and explain them as a product of fluctuation of base level.

Definition

The

International Commission on Stratigraphy The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), sometimes referred to unofficially as the "International Stratigraphic Commission", is a daughter or major subcommittee grade scientific daughter organization that concerns itself with stratigra ...

defines a diastem as " short interruption in deposition with little or no erosion before resumption of sedimentation"

Duration

Studies indicate that the age contained in diastems ranges from a few hundred to a few thousand years in shelf settings as well as throughout the

Paleozoic The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ' ...

References

{{cite book , last1=Catuneanu , first1=Octavian , year= 2006, title=Principles of sequence stratigraphy , url=https://archive.org/details/principlesofsequ0000catu , url-access=registration , location=Amsterdam , publisher=Elsevier Stratigraphy Unconformities