Abstract Échaillon stone, a Mesozoic platform limestone from SE France, is proposed as a Global Heritage Stone Resource. The Échaillon stone quarries are located at the western termination of the Alps, near the city of Grenoble. Stone from the main Échaillon quarries is an Upper Jurassic to Berriasian bioclastic near-reef limestone, renowned for its two characteristic white and pink colours. Two ancillary quarries nearby, the Lignet and Rovon quarries, provided the Lower Cretaceous (Barremian to Aptian) Yellow Échaillon stone, of lagoonal origin. Échaillon stone's unique characteristics, resistance to weathering and high aesthetic values made it a prized building and ornamental material used in many significant historical buildings in Europe, North Africa and the USA. Although the first use of Échaillon stone in buildings dates from the Gallo-Roman period, the industrial use ranges from the mid-nineteenth century, during the heyday of the Beaux-Arts architecture period in France, to the mid-twentieth century. The reputation of Échaillon stone was bolstered by world-renowned architects, sculptors and artists who used it for historical building ornament and sculptures. By the turn of the twentieth century, production started to decline and it ceased by the middle of that century.

Abstract The Ligurian cycle has a duration approximately equivalent to Early Jurassic times. This major transgressive/regressive facies cycle is characterized by several rifting events that are related to the development of the Ligurian Tethys. Its onset is marked by the Early Cimmerian unconformity dated as latest Norian. Its end corresponds to the Mid-Cimmerian unconformity, dated as Late Toarcian (Stille, 1924), which preceded the late Aalenian major regression linked with tectonic uplift known in many areas of northern Europe. One result of this uplift phase was the coeval rapid and major subsidence phase that allowed the accumulation of thick successions in the major half-grabens of the nascent Tethyan margin. The Ligurian cycle can be subdivided into three or four 2nd-order facies cycles, depending on the local tectonic development in the area. The whole cycle comprises 27 3rd-order depositional sequence cycles. These can be dated locally to the precision of an ammonite "horizon". Our sections are located along a north-south transect, from the Hebrides basin in the northern U.K. to the Alpes Maritimes in southern France. The study areas are located in the southeastern France Basin (now involved in Subalpine folding), the Causses (southern Massif Central of France), the Quercy (eastern Aquitaine) and the Paris Basin. These are compared with the Wessex, Cleveland and Hebrides basin in the U.K. Documentation is provided by ammonite biostratigraphic studies and outcrop and subsurface data. Such data have been reinterpreted using sequence-stratigraphic methodologies. One of the key results is that the 3rd-order depositional sequences that are the building blocks of the longer term cycles are correlatable units the entire western European craton.

Abstract Detailed stratigraphic and sedimentological analyses on Late Triassic-early Liassic sections in the internal and external western Alps, the southeast French basin and the southeastern part of the French Massif Central provides the opportunity to study the distribution of sedimentary bodies which were deposited during a long-term transgressive trend at the beginning of a continental encroachment cycle that extended onto the weakly differentiated Late Triassic European platform. Four short-term sequence boundaries can be identified: Late Norian or early Rhaetian, latest Rhaetian, end of early Hettangian and late Hettangian. They bound three sequences (S R , S H1 and S H2 ) whose duration is compatible with Vail's (1992) "sequence cycles". In some places, the first sequence (S R ) can be divides into two minor sequences (S R1 and S R2 ), which define an additional, upper Rhaetian sequence boundary. The second sequence (S H1 ) is also composed locally (subalpine domain) of two minor cycles. Evidence for rapid relative sea-level fall is lacking because of overall subsidence and moderate sediment supply. The maximum flooding intervals of sequences S R1 and S R2 are of Rhaetian age, but they cannot be dated more accurately due to restricted platform facies. Two other maximum flooding intervals are dated with ammonites from the early Hettangian (upper planorbis subzone) and the middle Hettangian (upper portlocki or lower laqueus subzone), respectively The deposition of these sequences is coeval with an increase in extensional tectonic activity whose culmination, during the middle and late Hettangian time, represents the earliest synrift event of Ligurian Tethys rifting in the study area. Differential subsidence, synsedimentary faults and paleostress indicators show that a new tectonic regime was developed, starting at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary. This can be correlated to the plate-tectonic reorganization observed, i.e., along the central Atlantic margins and may account for the long-term transgressive trend. As in many other Tethyan or Atlantic areas, this event is marked locally by short-lived intracontinental rift volcanism. The short-term sequences observed indicate some differences to Haq et al.'s (1987) chart, but the transgressive events are known in many areas inside and outside the European realm. The corresponding changes in accommodation space thus cannot be ascribed to local tectonics only. They may have been controlled by eustasy, but the widespread extent and the synchronism of some short events (volcanism around the Triassic/Jurassic boundary; middle-late Hettangian time breakup and drowning) suggest that subsidence, possibly controlled by fluctuations of intraplate stresses, may also have forced the short-term signal.