Geoscience Canada

Vol. 52 No. 1 (2025)
Articles

North American Stratigraphic Code

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  • North American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature,
  • Marie-Pierre Aubry,
  • Stéphanie Larmagnat
Marie-Pierre Aubry
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, 610 Taylor Road, Piscataway, New Jersey
Stéphanie Larmagnat
Ressources Naturelles Canada, Commission géologique du Canada, 490 Rue de la Couronne, Québec, Québec, G1K 9A9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12789/geocanj.2025.52.220

Published 2025-04-11

Keywords

  • Boundary,
  • Fundamental unit,
  • Nomenclature,
  • Procedure,
  • Rank,
  • Stratotype
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

North American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature, Aubry, M.-P., & Larmagnat, S. (2025). North American Stratigraphic Code. Geoscience Canada, 52(1), 1–48. https://doi.org/10.12789/geocanj.2025.52.220
Copyright Notice

Abstract

A French translation of the North American Stratigraphic Code was published in 1986. It concerned the Code of 1983, which was extensively revised into the Code of 2005, itself subsequently formally updated over the years and republished in 2021*. We present here a new French version of the Code. It also includes formally revised Articles 7 and 20 published in two official Reports in 2023 and 2024, respectively. At the request of the North American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature (NACSN) we have provided a new translation of the North American Stratigraphic Code for the benefit of French speaking geologists around the world. We present here this work.
The North American Stratigraphic Code of 1983 was translated into French by the « Ministère de l’Énergie et des Ressources du Québec » and published in 1986. While this translation remains available, it does not reflect the conceptual changes that guided the subsequent rewriting of the Code nor the expansion of its content, both of which led to a new publication in 2005. Several articles of the 2005 Code have since been formally amended to reflect advances in stratigraphic thinking over the years. These amendments, published in Stratigraphy, the official journal of the NACSN, were integrated in a recent, slightly revised version of the Code (2021). Nearly forty years have thus elapsed between the current Code and the 1986 French translation, well justifying the need for an updated French version of the Code.
Our translation follows as closely as possible the English text, in agreement with the wish of the NACSN. However, it was not always possible to honour this request and simultaneously meet the demands of the French syntax and grammar. We were careful in conciliating the two texts and in respecting the English meaning. We have departed from the English text in two important instances. We have translated « sequence », used throughout the English text, into « successions » because the term « sequence » has acquired a specific meaning that is not easily dissociated from « sequence stratigraphy » whereas « succession » remains a generic term. Perhaps more importantly, we have translated « rock unit » and « body of rock », idioms that describe the basic unit of stratigraphic nomenclature in the English Code, by « ensemble de terrains » which, we think, carries more soundly and efficiently the meaning of « rock unit » and « body of rock » than translations such as « unité de roche », « unité rocheuse » and « corps rocheux » would have.
In the last two years, several articles in the 2021 Code have been formally amended and their revision officially published as Reports 15 and 16 in Stratigraphy (2023 and 2024, respectively). Our translations of the amended texts of Articles 2, 61 and 62, designed to formalize chemostratigraphic units and published in Report 15, are incorporated in the present work. Report 16, which addresses in Articles 7 and 20 the empathetic matter of respect of the cultural traditions of people living in geologically significant regions, was published together with French and Spanish translations. The French version of Report 16 uses the 1986 French translation of Articles 7 and 20 while the amendments of these articles were translated by the « Bureau de la traduction, Services publics et Approvisionnement Canada ». By the time Report 16 was submitted for publication we had already translated Articles 7 and 20, and we retain our texts here for stylistic uniformity. For the same reason, we have modified the amended texts.

*North American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature, 2021, North American Stratigraphic Code: Stratigraphy, v. 18, p. 153–204.

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