二西方现代地质学发展的第二个阶段,大体是在十九世纪的上半叶.在这个时期内,地质学科的几个主要组成部分开始形成,产生了若干一直影响至今的学派.首先,利用古生物确定岩石的相对年代并初步建立起来的生物地层学,填补了前一时期还缺少的关于地层正常顺序的认识空白. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the second phase of the development of modern geology in the West, during which several major components of geology began to take shape, produced several schools of influence that have affected the present .First, The use of palaeontology to determine the relative age of rocks and the preliminary establishment of bio-stratigraphy filled up the blank of the understanding about the normal sequence of strata that was lacking in the previous period.