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nineteenth century. Suess found a convenient explanation in the der Alpen (The Origin of the Alps). The book actually offered a
contraction theory as promulgated by the French iconoclastic geolo- quick tour of the world’s mountains and an analysis of the great
gist Constant Prévost. Prévost argued that the contraction of the Cenomanian transgression (the term biosphere was also introduced
globe manifested itself by vast subsidences along steep faults creat- in that book).
ing the ocean basins, and mountain-building was a reaction (he Suess’ final major product was the massive, four-volume “long
wrote contrecoup) to subsidence along the margins of such subsid- argument” explaining the entire global geology in terms of the ideas
ent areas. This explained in one unified theory both the changing he had developed. Das Antlitz der Erde (The Face of the Earth),
capacity of ocean basins and the shortening-driven mountain build- published between 1883 and 1909, announced the birth of modern
ing with subsidence in the back. James Dwight Dana, following also global geology. It took Suess 26 years to complete it, and it was
Prévost’s theory, but mixing it with the contraction theory of Élie de translated immediately into French, English, Spanish, and partially
Beaumont, which was incompatible with Prévost’s hypothesis, had into Italian. Its introductory chapter was even published in
thought the same already in 1847, but Dana’s theory was internally Esperanto. Which geologist has not heard the terms horst, graben,
inconsistent. Subsidence alone could not give rise to asymmetric batholith, listric fault, virgation, syntaxis, Zwischengebirge (trans-
mountain structure; by contrast, it would have caused extension. lated into English as betwixt mountains or median masses), fore-
Suess solved the problem by introducing the concept of detachment land, hinterland, foredeep (Fig. 2), hinterland basin, back-folding
of large lithospheric slabs from the contracting interior, attached to (and thrusting), table-land (which was later dubbed by others as
it in only limited places, located excentrically with respect to the craton), eustasy, Atlantic- and Pacific-type continental margins,
basin geometry, thus generating shortening in one margin while Russian Platform, Laurentia, Gondwana-Land, Angara-Land,
stretching at the opposite one. This would also explain the volca- Tethys, Alpides, Altaids, Variscan mountains, Caledonian moun-
nism associated with the internal parts of mountain belts. tains, East African Rift Valleys, Sarmatian Stage, asylum (or refu-
Suess thought that the time had come to test his ideas on a global gia as is now commonly used)... ? Yet, how many of us know that
scale. Unlike his predecessors, he did not pick convenient cases to they were all introduced in Suess’ magnum opus or in his indepen-
support his theory, but reviewed, in as much detail as was then pos- dent papers and later incorporated into the Antlitz. We use his con-
sible, the entire geology of the globe. Such a thing had never been cepts so commonly that we no longer feel the need to refer to his
attempted before. His initial results were published in 1875 in a book. They have become the common property of geology (Fig. 3).
small book of only 168 pages with no figures, titled Die Entstehung But this should not lead to a professional amnesia about his

Figure 2. Suess’ cross section across Asia that he sent to William Sollas, the editor of the authorized English translation of Das Antlitz der Erde (The Face
of the Earth). This section was published in two pieces in the first foldout of the fifth volume of the English translation, the publication of which was delayed
because of World War I (1924). I have only enlarged the lettering for easier reading. Notice the underthrusting of the ocean to form the foredeep.

Figure 3. Tectonics of the earth accord-
ing to Suess. The red lines are the trend-
lines of mountain belts published in the
Antlitz. Suess took Australia and Ant-
arctica out of Gondwana-Land during
the Mesozoic.

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