a Scottish geologist, is considered to be the founder of modern Geology. In the rocks of Scotland, Hutton found fingers of granite reaching well into sedimentary rocks and saw this as evidence of subterranean fire and heat. He also found neatly deposited layers of sedimentary rocks overlaying rock layers that were almost vertical. The lower layers of rock, he concluded, must have been deposited eons before, and then later upturned. From this, Hutton was the first to describe the vast expanses of time in earth's history. These finding were reported in 1785 in a paper entitled Theory of the Earth, often cited as one of the seminal foundations of geological theory.