The 150th anniversary of the Maastrichtian Stage - a celebratory conference: Introduction

Abstract

It was André Hubert Dumont (1809–1857) (Fig. 1) who, while mapping at the St Pietersberg south of Maastricht in the summer of 1849, noted that the higher portion of the yellowish-white friable limestones exposed there represented something unique. So unique that he coined a name for it (Dumont, 1849), his ‘système maestrichtien’, with a fossil hash level at its base, replete with faecal pellets. These pellets have since been described and formally named by Van Amerom (1971) as Coprulus maastrichtensis, and Dumont’s ‘système’ has been shown to correspond in part with our current concept of the Maastrichtian Stage, the youngest slice of Cretaceous time.