Assignment: GSC Timeline
When dealing with deep time, we are working with profoundly large numbers that our minds are not well equipped to understand on a more intuitive level. Thus, in order to make sense of it all, scientists resort to breaking the time up into sections and subsection within which they organize and categorize all of the geological and evolutionary data and events as they are discovered. Still, it can be difficult to appreciate the temporal "distances" between one event and the next, and an often helpful tool for doing so is to draw out major events in the evolution of our planet and biosphere on a drawn out timeline.
For this assignment you will complete a timeline of the Earth, which is to a single, linear scale, covers the time from the formation of the Earth until today, and is at least 10 feet (~3 meters) long-may be done on a poster board, with stacked lengths of timeline. The length is meant to start you on the process of thinking about deep time the way geologists do. You must include the events and first (known) occurrences of organisms listed below. Additionally, you must add five other events or first organisms which you think are significant in the evolution of life on Earth. Do not include events prior to the formation of the Earth or events in human history. On a separate sheet, include a brief statement (fewer than 100 words) for each of these five events or organisms explaining why you think that it is significant.
For each event or organism, you must include a start date according to current science. Dates should be given to as to as close to the event as is known in the literature (please do not give me time ranges). You may use the abbreviations Ga (billion years ago), Ma (million years ago) and ka (thousand years ago).
Each entry must include a date, a label (including the genus (Italicized) for organisms marked with an asterisk), and a source. Here are two examples of appropriate labels to get you started:
4.5 Ga. Formation of the Moon. (M. Barboni et al. Early formation of the Moon 4.51 billion years ago. Sci. Adv. 3, e1602365 (2017)) or
70 Ma. Favorite Cretaceous dinosaur. Therizinosaurus.
Required :
Events and First Occurrence of Organisms (not in chronological order)
Birds*
Dinosaurs*
Eukaryotes
Fish*
Formation of the Earth
Formation of the Moon
Flowers*
Humans*
Insects*
KT extinction
Land animals*
Life on Earth
Mammals*
Metazoans
Oxygenation of the atmosphere
PT extinction
Trees*
Whales*
Your favorite Cretaceous dinosaur*
Your favorite Jurassic dinosaur*
*Include genus in label.