The role of stratotypes in stratigraphy

In principle and in practice, Hedberg's attempt to restrict the terms Age/Stage to golden spike-defined entities has failed. However, Hedbergians and traditional stratigraphic paleontologists can find common ground if they will admit that aurichronologic and biochronologic units are both legitimate subcategories of geochronologic units. If so, Hedberg's major program would be vindicated in that golden spikes would still be used to define the Phanerozoic Standard Global Geochronologic Units, while traditional stratigraphic paleontologists would retain the ability to modify the boundaries of their provincial Ages/Stages as they saw fit, provided that such modifications did not violate the strict nominal stratotypes of those Ages/Stages.