Reasons for a name

The name “Lutetian” was coined by Albert Auguste de Lapparent, a French engineer introduced to geological mapping around 1860 by Jean-Baptiste Élie de Beaumont. In 1883 Lapparent published a Treatise of Geology where he revised the stratigraphic interval described as “Parisian” by Charles Lyell and Alcide d’Orbigny. Lapparent subdivided it into Lutetian, Bartonian, and Ligurian, equating the first with the Coarse Limestone Formation, first studied by Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart.

The name was chosen to honor the strata of the French Capital, built on the soft sediments where the catacombs had been excavated a century earlier, and whose fossils formed the basis for Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s transmutational theory: Lutetia was the ancient name of Paris, and the Lutetian was the Parisian in the strict sense.
Albert Auguste de Lapparent as a student at the Ecoles de Mines of Paris (1860)

The Parisian groups all Eocene.—Having now given a rapid sketch of the different groups of the Paris basin, we may observe generally that they all belong to the Eocene epoch, although the entire series must doubtless have required an immense lapse of ages for its accumulation. The shells of the different fresh-water groups, constituting at once some of the lowest and uppermost members of the series, are nearly all referrible to the same species, and the discordance between the marine testacea of the calcaire grossier and the upper marine sands is very inconsiderable.Charles Lyell, 1833
The first published stratigraphic column in the history of science: the tertiary strata of the Paris Basin, by Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart (1811). These and analogue strata formed the basis for the Eocene epoch instituted by Charles Lyell in 1833.
Tertiary strata of the Paris Basin, drawn by Georges Cuvier and Alexandre Brongniart (1811).
The Calcaire Grossier, like the whole Parisian series, was laterally discontinuous. It was subdivided by Lapparent in four intervals, each interval comprising secondary members. Fossils indicated a shallow marine environment, but associations changed from member to member. The task of refining Lapparent’s use of the term Lutetian was carried out by René Abrard, the fist to define a reference succession. In 1925 he proposed a five-fold division based on fossils, from topmost to lowermost: Zone IVb – with cerithioidean gastropods Zone IVa – with Orbitolites complanatus Zone III – with Echinolampas calvimontanum and Echinanthus issayavensis Zone II – with only Nummulites laevigatus Zone I – with Nummulites laevigatus and Nummulites lamarcki In the sixties another dedicated French geologist, Alphonse Blondeau, looked out for stratotype sections, moving some 50 miles north of Paris, at Saint-Leu d’Esserent, where he proposed to set the base of the stratotype, and close to Saint-Vaast-les-Mello, for its top. A synthesis of his researches was published in 1981, under the supervision of Charles Pomerol.

Learn more

Abrard R. (1925). Le Lutétien du bassin de Paris. Essai de monographie stratigraphique. Société française d’imprimerie, Angers, 388 p. Blondeau A. (1981). Lutetian, in: Pomerol, C. (Ed.), Stratotypes of Paleogene Stages. Bulletin de l’Information de la Géologie du Bassin Paris, Paris, pp. 167-180. Gély J.-P. (1996). Le Lutétien du Bassin Parisien: de l’analyse séquentielle haute résolution à la reconstitution paléogeéographique. Bulletin d’Information des Géologues du Bassin de Paris 34: 3-27. Albert Auguste de Lapparent (1883). Traité de Géologie. Paris, Savy, 1280 p. Charles Lyell (1833). Principles of geology. Volume 3. Didier Merle (2008). Stratotype Lutétien. Biotope, Paris, 288 p. Martin J.S. Rudwick (2014). Earth’s deep history: how it was discovered and why it matters. The University of Chicago Press, 360 p.   Webpage of the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, in Paris, dedicated to the Lutetian of the Paris Basin. An updated study of the stratigraphy of the Paris Basin, by the French Geological Society. The stratigraphy of the Paris catacombs.