A Scottish naturalist who proposed the theory of Uniformitarianism. He believed that the slow geologic processes such as weathering and erosion have been occurring throughout the Earth's history and that those processes are what shaped the Earth's landscape.

His theory was based on the history of Hadrian's Wall. Built by Romans, Hadrian's Wall was 1500 years old and showed signs of very little change. Because of this, Hutton concluded that Earth must be much older.

James Hutton coined the phrase "the present is the key to the past" and has been dubbed the "father of modern geology".

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.