Adam Sedgwick

Adam Sedgwick 1785-1873, English geologist. He was a professor at Cambridge from 1818. His most important work was a study, made with R. I. Murchison, of the rock formation of Devonshire, which they named the Devonian system. Sedgwick also introduced the term Cambrian.

Bibliography: See J. W. Clark and T. M. Hughes, The Life and Letters of the Rev. Adam Sedgwick (2 vol., 1890).

type locality The particular site where the type section (stratotype) for a stratigraphic unit is located, or where the original type section was first described. Stratigraphic units normally take the geographic component of their name from that of the type locality, or a key physical feature there, e.g. the Kimmeridge Clay from Kimmeridge Bay in Dorset, England. Some early-defined stratigraphic units were named after the type area, e.g. the Cambrian System in Wales was named by Adam Sedgwick (1835) after Cambria, the latinized version of the Welsh cymry (‘fellow countryman’) and Cymru (Wales).