A geologist or scientist who believes that major geological features and changes were formed primarily by sudden, violent, catastrophic events.
From 'catastrophe' + '-ist,' a suffix meaning someone who practices or believes in something. Catastrophists were prominent in geological theory during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Catastrophists were trying to fit geological evidence into the Bible's account of Noah's flood—this religious motivation actually led them to observe rocks and fossils carefully, laying groundwork for modern geology even as their theory eventually lost out.
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