Science and Technology of The Song Dynasty - Geology and Climatology

Geology and Climatology

Shen Kuo also made hypotheses in regards to geology and climatology in his Dream Pool Essays of 1088. Shen believed that land was reshaped over time due to perpetual erosion, uplift, and deposition of silt, and cited his observance of horizontal strata of fossils embedded in a cliffside at Taihang as evidence that the area was once the location of an ancient seashore that had shifted hundreds of miles east over an enormous span of time. Shen also wrote that since petrified bamboos were found underground in a dry northern climate zone where they had never been known to grow, climates naturally shifted geographically over time.