Via Discovery News:

… geology — at least in the English and American histories of it — is
thought of as commencing with Scottish geologist James Hutton and the
“Geological Revolution” of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
That’s when scientists recognized that rocks and fossils told the story
of a very old Earth with a complicated history.

…But in other traditions around the world, Earth
science, which includes geology as well as marine and atmospheric
sciences, started much earlier, and even includes voyages of discovery
by the Portuguese in the 1500s, said Alvarez, whose co-author on the
paper is science historian Henrique Leitao of the Universidade de Lisboa
in Portugal.