soil classification system cannot be readily applied to paleosols. For example, a modern alfisol--broadly defined as a forest soil--would not have existed prior to the evolution of trees. More problematically, it is specifically defined by chemical properties that would not be preserved in the rock record. While modern soil orders are often used to describe paleosols in a qualitative sense, a paleosol-specific naming scheme has been proposed, although it is only used sporadically in the literature.

Until a paleosol-specific naming scheme