不整合对比是地层地质学最古老的方法之一。对这种对比方法的兴趣,在1970年代末因Vail及其在埃克森公司的同事的工作而重新兴起的。埃克森公司的人员声称他们已经查明一系列世界范围的海平面变化,而这些变化在地层记录中均有所反映,并且能从地震剖面上根据不整合予以识别。为方便起见,本文作者 Unconformity is one of the oldest methods of formation geology. Interest in this comparative approach revived in the late 1970s over the work of Vail and his colleagues at Exxon. Exxon employees claim they have identified a series of world-wide sea-level changes that are reflected in stratigraphic records and can be identified from seismic profiles based on unconformity. For the sake of convenience, the author of this article