Paleozoic Submarine Landslips near Quebec City

The following paper is an international attempt to explain the peculiar and interesting "conglomerates" at Quebec and Lévis as submarine landslips in the earlier stages of the development and deformation of a geosyncline. Since the discovery of undoubted ancient tillites and stratified drift in the Paleozoic, there has been a tendency on the part of American stratigraphers to overemphasize the necessity for a glacial origin of some extremely heterogeneous conglomerates and breccias. The authors of this paper review the history of the Quebec controversy from 1860 to the present day and compare the phenomena of the Quebec and Lévis "conglomerates" with those of the Wildflysch and blocs exotiques of the Alps; the Kimmeridgian boulder beds at Brora, Scotland; etc. The origin of the Quebec conglomerates should not be studied as an isolated phenomenon, but must be considered in relation to the history of the geosyncline in which they occur. It remains to test the hypothesis from this general point of view, especially in the field. Finally, the subject transcends the mere origin of the conglomerates and has a direct bearing on paleogeographic problems, such as the presence or absence of land barriers in the Eo-Paleozoic of Eastern Canada.