Definition: Palinspastic

Reading rocks.

Palinspastic: Showing the previous location of geologic features, correcting for any intervening crustal movements.


Basically it is a term used in geology, and it means taking an outcrop and (in your mind) working your way backward through the deformation and time to see the individual units in their original depositional environments.
It's kind of like only having the last page of a story and trying to figure out how, and where it began by using clues embedded within the text.
It's one of my favorite things to do, untangle the history of rocks. It makes me feel a little like James Hutton (Father of Geology) and a little like Nancy Drew (teenage supersleuth;)