What Is Hutton's Unconformity?

Hutton's Unconformity is one of the most important and significant localities in the history of geology. It is to be found on the Isle of Arran on the island's north east coastline to the north of North Newton .

James Hutton (1726 - 1796) first realised or had confirmed here in on this Scottish island in the Firth of Clyde that unimaginably long periods of time were required to create rock formations. While this may sound blindingly obvious to us today, his theory was controversial at that point in history, around the same time that Charles Darwin was getting a hard time over his Theory of Evolution.

In 1795, the year before his death, Hutton published his Theory of the Earth, which was largely responsible for embedding the idea that gradual processes at work today have also operated in the past and given a long enough time scale, can account for the complex and profound changes that have occurred during the history of the earth.

It was also at this location that we can truly say the science of geology was born.