TIME COUNTING FORWARDS FROM THE BIG BANG to 420 Million years
before the Present
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http://history.evansville.net/prehist.html
Wikipedia:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_Bang
BeforeBigBang In a vacuum state with no space or
time, physical laws would not seem appropriate. However, the law that
states
matter can neither be created nor destroyed implies another state here,
i.e. a state of pure energy unbound by space and time. The chance
fluctuation
indicated below for the beginning of the Big Bang would have occurred
in
this energy field. This occurrence could have been like the breaking of
a dam, or a puncture that explodes a filled tire, or a bomb that
violently
explodes upon detonation. The resulting tiny bubble of space-time
provided
an outlet for the enormous energy latent in the pre-space-time state.
This
of course gives no account of how or where or why the initial
pure-energy
state came about. We may never know, but we can always speculate.
(AR, 2/1/02)
BBB In a vacuum
state with no space or time, physical laws would not seem appropriate.
However, the law that states matter can neither be created nor
destroyed implies another state of matter here, i.e. a state of pure
energy unbounded by space and time. The chance fluctuation indicated
below for the beginning of the Big Bang would have occurred in this
energy field. This occurrence could have been like the breaking of a
dam, or a puncture that explodes a filled tire, or a bomb that
violently explodes upon detonation. The resulting tiny bubble of
space-time provided an outlet for the enormous energy latent in the
pre-space-time state. This of course gives no account of how or where
or why the initial pure-energy state came about. We may never know, but
we can always speculate.
(AR, 2/1/02)
0000 While in a vacuum state a
chance fluctuation occurred in the void owing to quantum uncertainty.
This yielded an infinitesimal bit of space-time that ballooned in size
10 to the 50th times in a quadrillionth of a quadrillionth of a second.
Before it could revert back to nothing, a sort of negative pressure
caused a runaway expansion faster than the speed of light. This is
described in the 1997 book: "The Inflationary Universe" by Alan H. Guth.
(WSJ, 6/17/97, p.A16)(WSJ, 4/11/03, p.B1)
BIG BANG Time, space, matter and energy came into
being. Matter and energy began to define space and time. In 2002
scientists said experiments confirmed that only 5% of the universe was
composed of ordinary matter. 65% was said to be "dark energy" and 30%
was "dark matter." In 1998 Joseph authored “The Big Bang.” A 3rd ed.
was published in 2004. In 2004 Simon Singh authored “Big Bang: The Most
Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and Why You Need to Know
About It.” In 2006 NASA released data backing the Big Bang theory that
the universe sprang from marble size to infinity in less than a
trillion-trillionth second.
(SFC, 12/14/02, p.A2)(SSFC, 5/30/04, p.M7)(Econ,
11/6/04, p.87)(WSJ, 3/17/06, p.A1)
10 -43 Sec. Theorists think that before gravity
separated out at this moment, that the strong and weak nuclear forces,
and the electromagnetic force were unified.
(NG, May 1985, J. Boslough, p. 652)
Planck time. On time scales shorter than this, the
effects of gravity must be included in all physical processes. In this
time light can travel 3 x 10-32 cm--less than a quadrillionth of the
distance across a proton.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.197,227)
10 -43 - 10 -35 We will call the period beginning at
10-43 second and ending at 10-35 second after the Big Bang the GUT, or
grand unified theory era. This was an era of very high temperatures,
with the energy of collisions ranging from 1019 GeV at the beginning to
1015 GeV at the end. During the GUT era, then, there were only two
kinds of particles: fermions (leptons and quarks, now understood to be
identical) and bosons (the X-particles, gluons, vector mesons, and
photons). In 2006 experiments at Fermilab found that a type of B-mesons
(Bs) switch between being matter and antimatter some three trillion
times a second.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.155)(Econ, 4/22/06, p.77)
10 -36 Sec. Separation of the Strong Force. Although
atoms do not yet exist, the force that will hold their nuclei together
becomes an individual entity. In 2005 it was reported that scientific
evidence from Brookhaven National Laboratory indicated the creation of
a quark-gluon plasma, a form of matter that last existed moments after
the big bang.
(NG, p.12, Jan, 94)(WSJ, 4/1/05, p.B1)
10-36-10-32 S. Inflation. Triggered by separation of
the strong force, the universe expands more in this instant than it has
in the roughly 15 billion years since.
(NG, p.12, Jan, 94)
10 -35 Sec. Strong force freezes.
This begins the electroweak era. The interactions between particles are
governed by three (rather than four) fundamental forces--the strong,
electroweak, and gravitational interactions. It is suspected that the
universe inflated very rapidly about this time... the curvature of the
universe increased from 10-23 cm (about 10 billion times smaller than
the size of a single proton) to something around 10 cm--the size of a
grapefruit.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.151,157)
10 -32 - 10-5 S. Quarks and anti-quarks. As
inflation ended, the still expanding universe now teems with quarks and
anti-quarks that annihilate each other upon contact. But a surplus of
quarks- one per billion pairs- survives. This surplus of quarks will
ultimately combine to form matter.
(NG, p.12, Jan, 94)
10-32 to 3,000 Years Energy domination. Because of
high temperatures, radiant energy generates most of the gravity in the
universe during this period.
(NG, p.12, Jan, 94)
10 -12 Sec. The final two forces
split off. Electromagnetism is carried by photons, the basic unit of
electromagnetic energy. The weak force controls certain forms of
radioactive decay.
(NG, p.12, Jan, 94)
10 -10 Sec. Weak and
electromagnetic forces freeze. This was the beginning of the quark era.
The universe will have cooled off to some 10 quadrillion degrees or so.
Above this temperature, there is enough energy available (>100 GeV)
in interparticle collisions to create vector bosons; below this
temperature there is not sufficient energy to do so.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.151,157)
10 -5 Sec. Quark confinement. As
the universe cools to one trillion K, trios of quarks form protons and
neutrons.
(NG, p.12, Jan, 94)
10 -3 Sec. Quarks freeze into
particles.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.157)
According to the Standard Theory, all matter in the
universe is made from different combinations of two types of sub-atomic
particles. Fermions, such as electrons and quarks, are the bricks or
fundamental building blocks of matter. A different type of particle,
called bosons, are the mortar. Bosons are the carriers or forces like
electromagnetism and gravity, which hold the bricks of our universe
together. Peter Higgs postulated around 1970 that the Higgs boson,
usually invisible, create a field through which subatomic particles,
such as quarks and electrons, pass. Experiments in 2001 found that muon
spin modification in a magnetic field varied from that predicted by the
Standard Model.
(LSA, Fall 1995, p.34)(SFC, 11/4/00, p.A14)(SFC,
2/9/01, p.A5)
3 Minutes Up to this time the temperature was so high
and the collisions in the plasma so violent that no nucleus could
cohere. The temperature at 3 minutes was about a billion degrees -- a
little less than a hundred times hotter than the temperature at the
center of the sun.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.26)
Between the ages of 3 minutes and
500,000 years, the universe consisted of an expanding plasma with no
atoms present. The nuclei in the plasma were protons, deuterons, helium
3, and helium 4. All other nuclei were synthesized in stars after the
formation of galaxies.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.25-26)
3 Min, 3.5 sec Helium was formed following the Big
Bang.
(WSJ, 11/30/00, p.A12)
3,000 Years Matter Domination. With cooling matter
became the primary source of gravity.
(NG, p.12, Jan, 94)
10,000 Years Atoms formed after the big bang.
(NG, May 1985, J. Boslough, p. 650)
300k PBB The universe was composed of vast waves of
radiation with clumpy structures of hydrogen stretched across empty
space. This was supported by data gathered by the "Boomerang" telescope
mission in 1998-1999, which also supported the idea of a flat universe
expanding forever.
(SFC, 4/27/00, p.A7)
300k PBB Not until the universe was this old did
light break away from matter and begin to travel freely through our
expanded speck of space. Hydrogen gas condensed and clumped into
contracting clouds that were the seeds for stars. These photons later
became known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB)
(NG, p.12, Jan, 94)(SFC, 1/10/98, p.A2)(Econ,
6/25/05, p.79)
400k PBB The universe cooled enough that charged
electrons and protons combined to form hydrogen atoms, which allowed
photons to escape the hot gas of the Big Bang.
(SFC, 1/12/05, p.A2)
500,000 PBB Post Big Bang. The universe suddenly
underwent a change that had the effect of lessening the probability
that radiation would collide with matter.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.15)
1 Million Years PBB The present stage of the universe
was ushered in by the "freezing" of the hot plasma into a collection of
atoms less than a million years after the Big Bang. Under the influence
of gravity, the expanding material began to come together in clumps.
The aggregations would eventually form the galaxies.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.24)
106 - 1014 The Stelliferous or Star-Filled Era.
(LSA, Spg/97, p.30)
On Apr 20, 1997 an article in the
Astrophysics Journal identified some of the missing matter (dark
matter) of the universe as ionized hydrogen and helium gas spread out
between the galaxies. The atoms were stripped of their electrons early
in the formation of the universe. It was later reported that only 5% of
the universe was made of ordinary matter. Dark matter formed 25% and
dark energy composed 70%.
(SFC, 4/21/97, p.A3)(SFC, 9/23/02, p.A4)
200 Million PBB Galaxy formation. Matter continued to
clump in the areas of concentration and over eons was condensed by
gravity.
(NG, p.12, Jan, 94)(SFC, 2/12/03, p.A4)
300 Million PBB It took an estimated 300 million
years for the universe to cool and for the first stars to form from
hydrogen and helium.
(AP, 1/7/04)
500 Mil Evidence from the Hubble
Space Telescope in 2001 suggested that the peak of star formation came
about 500 million years after the Big Bang and has declined ever since.
(SFC, 1/9/02, p.A11)
750 Mil In 2004 a team of
astrophysicists said they have detected a tiny galaxy, the farthest
known object from Earth, formed when the universe was just 750 million
years old.
(AP, 2/16/04)
700 Mil In 2008 astronomers took pictures of a
galaxy, named A1689-xD1, that had formed some 13 billion ears earlier,
when the universe was about 700 million years old.
(SFC, 2/13/08, p.A9)
820 Mil The galaxy listed as RD1
was detected in Sept. 1997 and estimated to have come into being 820
million years after the Big Bang. It was estimated to be 12.22 billion
light-years distant.
(SFC, 3/13/98, p.A2)
1 Billion PBB Quasars that formed less than a billion
years after the big bang were identified in 2000 under the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey program.
(SFC, 4/14/00, p.A17)
TIME COUNTED BACKWARDS FROM THE PRESENT
20Bil BC-8 Bil BC Estimates of the age of the
universe are in this range, but most astronomers believe it all began
about 15 billion years ago.
(NG, p.9, Jan, 94)
15.8Bil BC In 2006 a new finding implied that the
universe is about 15.8 billion years old and about 180 billion
light-years wide. New evidence suggested that the Hubble constant, a
number that measures the expansion rate and age of the universe, is
actually 15% smaller than other studies have found.
(AP, 8/7/06)(http://tinyurl.com/jnc7x)
13.7Bil BC In 2006 NASA released data backing the Big
Bang theory that the universe sprang from marble size to infinity in
less than a trillion-trillionth second.
(WSJ, 3/17/06, p.A1)
13.7 Bil BC Scientists in 2002, using data from the
Hubble Space Telescope, confirmed that the universe began about this
time. Evidence also confirmed that the universe is flat and expanding
and not closing in on itself. In 2003 astronomers used data from the
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and concluded that age of
the cosmos to be 13.7 bil years.
(SFC, 4/25/02, p.A2)(SFC, 5/24/02, p.A2)(SFC,
2/12/03, p.A4)
13.23 Bil In 2004 French and Swiss astronomers
detected the most distant galaxy ever observed, 13.23 billion
light-years from Earth.
(WSJ, 3/2/04, p.A1)
13Bil BC Astronomers in 1998 estimated the universe
to be about 13 billion years old.
(USAT, 10/9/98, p.10A)
13Bil BC In 1999 astronomers used the Hubble Space
Telescope to detect a galaxy, dubbed "Sharon." It was the oldest and
most distant object ever detected.
(SFC, 4/15/99, p.A7)
13Bil BC In 2003 scientists reported that the oldest
planet ever detected is nearly 13 billion years old and more than twice
the size of Jupiter, locked in orbit around a whirling pulsar and a
white dwarf located near the heart of a globular star cluster some
5,600 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius.
(AP, 7/11/03)
13Bil BC In 2008 astronomers took pictures of a
galaxy, named A1689-xD1, that dated from about this time, when the
universe was about 700 million years old.
(SFC, 2/13/08, p.A9)
12.1 Bil BC In 2005 NASA and other institutions
reported a huge galaxy, HUDF-JD2, dating from about 800 million years
after the Big Bang. Odds on the date were given at 75%. The galaxy was
said to be unusually massive and mature for its place in the young
universe.
(SFC, 10/10/05, p.A4)
12.1-12.2 Bil Reionization of the cosmos occurred
when the universe was 6-7% of its current age. This marked the end of
the Dark Age as stars generated high energy photons that split the
hydrogen atoms fogging up the universe.
(NH, 7/02, p.72)
12 Billion Astronomers in 1998 reported sighting
galaxies 12 billion light-years away using the Near Infrared Camera and
Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) on the Hubble Space Telescope.
(USAT, 10/9/98, p.10A)
12 Billion Tentative new results from the European
satellite Hipparcos in 1997 indicated this as the approximate age of
the universe and that the oldest stars were about 11 billion years old.
(SFC, 2/17/97, p.A2)
12 Billion A group of astronomers in 1999 concluded
that the universe was about 12 billion years old based on data from the
Hubble telescope. This group calculated the Hubble constant at 70 km
per sec. Other astronomers still argued for an age from 14 to 18
billion years.
(SFC, 5/26/99, p.A1)(SFC, 5/26/99, p.A1,13)
12-10 Bil Observations by the Hubble telescope
determined that the universe must be at least 10-12 billion years old.
(SFC, 4/24/00, p.A10)
11 Billion In 1996 astronomers using the Hubble space
telescope discovered a galaxy under construction. They say 18 gigantic
star clusters packed within a space just 2 million light years across
and apparently on the verge of forming a brand new galaxy.
(SFC, 9/5/96, p.A3)
10 Billion In 1998 scientists of the Supernova
Cosmology Project (SCP) detected a supernova with a 1.2 redshift from
this time. SN1998ex was nicknamed Albinoni.
(CW, Spring ‘99, p.6)
9 Billion In 1999 astronomers reported a gamma ray
burster, GRB 990123, near the constellation Bootes that originated
about this time.
(SFC, 3/26/99, p.A2)
7.5Bil BC In 2008 astronomers recorded the explosion
of a star in a gamma ray burst from about this time. The light took 7.5
billion light-years to reach Earth. .
(SFC, 3/22/08, p.A2)
7 Billion In 1997 scientists of the Supernova
Cosmology Project (SCP) detected a supernova with a .83 redshift from
this time, which they named SN1997ap.
(CW, Spring ‘99, p.6)
5Bil BC-4.5Bil BC The sun is now about 5 billion
years old. A rapidly rotating gas cloud will spin off some of the
material at its equator into a disk. This explains why all planets
orbit in roughly the same plane and direction and why they all move in
near circular orbits around the Sun.
(JST-TMC,1983, p.210)(Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.63)(SFC,
4/22/98, p.A11)
The early sun went through a
stormy period called the T-Tauri phase, when powerful winds and
radiation blew outward.
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.A10)
4.5 Bil The abiogenic theory of
Thomas Gold holds that hydrocarbons were a component of the material
that formed Earth through accretion of solids. In 1999 Gold authored
"The Deep Hot Biosphere."
(NH, 12/98, p.12)
5 x 109 [This cosmological decade system continues
in the future file after 10 billion of years of an active Sun.]
(LSA, Spg/97, p.31)
HISTORY OF EARTH
Time reference is BP, i.e. before the present.
5.0-4.5 Billion As the earth became molten the
nickel-iron migrated inwards, gravitated to form the core. The lighter
materials, largely silicates, were left behind as outer layers, mantle
and crust. The formation of Earth took between 120 and 290 million
years following the explosion of a nearby supernova.
(DD-EVTT, p.114)(SFC, 11/10/00, p.D7)
The formation of the earth was a
process of accrual where numerous planetesimals crash together and
eventually formed a large enough mass to attract more floating matter
to the hot fireball of earth.
(TMP, KCTS-Video, 1987)
In 1996 it was proposed that the
early Earth may have been covered by a thick atmosphere that was blown
away by storms from the young sun.
(SFC, 9/27/96, p.A12)
4.6 Billion Earth formed, its gravity pulled in
countless meteorites. As the crust cooled, the oceans condensed.
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, R. Gore, p.128)
4.6-4 Billion This was a period of heavy meteor
bombardment on Earth.
(NH, 9/97, p.84)
4.6Bil BC-3.8Bil BC In 2008 scientists reported that
water was abundant on Mars during this period.
(SFC, 7/17/08, p.A2)
4.6-3.6 Eogeological time. Almost
no trace remains of the crust formed at this time.
(DD-EVTT, p.139)
4.6-3.5 Billion BP
On Mars the Noachian period.
(SFC, 7/7/97, p.A4)
4.5 Billion Our moon formed when a Mars-sized planet
or asteroid plowed into Earth, vaporized itself and the proto-Earth,
and gas and rock reaggregated to make the Moon.
(PacDis, Winter ’97, p.28)
4.5 Billion Moon rocks dated.
NG, March 1990, J. Boslough p. 126)
4.5 Billion BP Molten rock on Mars crystallized. The
Allan Hills 84001 meteorite was analyzed to this age.
(SFC, 8/7/96, p.A9)(SFC, 11/1/96, p.A16)
4.5 Billion A meteor of this age named the Canyon
Diablo meteorite is held by the Smithsonian Institute.
(SJSVB, 9/9/96, p.14A)
4.5 Billion Eros, a near Earth asteroid, dated to
about this time.
(SFC, 9/22/00, p.A7)
4.5-3.8 BYA Hadean Time: The 1st 500 million years of
Earth’s history. BYA = Billion Years Ago.
(www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/precambrian/hadean.html)
4.5-3.5 BYA An initial period of crater forming
impacts bombarded the Earth.
(SFC, 3/10/00, p.A4)
4.4Bil BC-4.3 Bil BC In 2001 a tiny crystal of
zircon from northwestern Australia was estimated at this age and
suggested that the Earth was already cool enough to hold a solid crust.
(SFC, 1/11/01, p.A2)
4.4Bil BC-4.1Bil BC Spectrometer mappings by the Mars
Express, launched in 2003 by the European Space Agency (ESA),
identified a clay forming period on Mars that dated to this period.
(Econ, 4/22/06, p.76)
4.3-4.1 In 2005 Scientists used
the radioactive decay rate of uranium to date zircons from Western
Australia to this period. The evidence pointed to a watery world
well-suited for life to emerge.
(SFC, 5/7/05, p.A4)
4.28Bil BC In 2008 scientists reported that a pinkish
tract of bedrock on the eastern shore of Canada's Hudson Bay contains
the oldest known rocks on Earth, formed 4.28 billion years ago, not
long after the planet was formed.
(Reuters, 9/25/08)
4.2 Billion The first lithosphere formed very roughly
about this time.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.5)
4 Billion Northwest Canada was formed.
(NG, March 1990, J. Boslough p. 126)
4 Billion The Archaea branch of life may have begun
this far back in time.
(SFC, 8/23/96, p.A21)
The first life forms on Earth
were coacervates that formed from lipid aggregations and hydrophobic
interactions. It was a reducing atmosphere back then but there were
energy sources that put things like coacervates together: solar
radiation, volcanic eruptions, radioactive decay released heat,
lightning storms, etc. The coacervate was the first step to cellular
organization!!! Prokaryotes were then able to form after coacervates
and from then on came cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria increased the levels
of Oxygen in the atmosphere from 1% to 21% which formed ozone. Ozone
then filtered uv light which allowed all life forms to then come on
land instead of living in the ocean. Eukaryotes like us were then able
to evolve!!
(Internet, chaos page, 5.24/98)
In 1999 Paul Davies published
"The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life."
(SFEC, 2/28/99, BR p.1)
4 Bil BC In 2000 evidence in sedimentary rocks off of
Greenland indicated chemical evidence of early life from about this
time.
(SFC, 12/1/00, p.A21)
4Bil BC-3.5Bil BC Volcanic activity on Mars began
during this period and lasted a few hundred million years. Sulphur rich
gases transformed the planet into a very acidic environment.
(Econ, 4/22/06, p.77)
4Bil BC–543 Mil BC Precambrian Period
(www.paleoportal.org/time_space/period.php?period_id=17)
4Bil BC-3.8Bil BC The likely period of time over
which life first developed on Earth.
(NH, 9/97, p.84)
4Bil BC-0 In 1998 Richard Fortey published "Life: A
Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth.
(SFEC, 4/12/98, BR p.7)
3.98 The oldest rocks yet known
occur in west Greenland and date to this time +/- 170 million years.
They reveal features that are not seen in any younger formations. They
are very metamorphosed rocks and granites, showing sworled and whispy
structures more involved and complex than any that have been produced
on a wide scale since.
(DD-EVTT, p.36,89)
3.9 Billion The first cells of the superfamily of
organisms called eukaryotes (cells with nuclei) began. A gene that
codes for the enzyme telomerase was thought to date back to this time.
(SFC, 8/15/97, p.A3)
3.9Bil BC Meteorites reached Earth after being
ejected from the Moon from the impact of massive unknown objects at
about this time.
(SFC, 12/1/00, p.A21)
3.9Bil BC Astronomers in 2008 reported that a giant
meteorite crashed into Mars about this time and created a huge
elliptical scar in the northern lowlands.
(SFC, 6/26/08, p.A4)
3.9-3.5 Billion Life originated as
single-celled organisms. The dense atmosphere was primarily carbon
dioxide.
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, R. Gore, p.129)
Lynn Margulis in 1981 wrote
"Symbiosis in Cell Evolution." She proposed that three types of
prokaryotes fused biologically to create the first living cells with
nucleic structures.
(Wired, 2/98, p.174)
3.85 Billion Scientists published evidence that rocks
from the Greenland island of Akilia showed evidence of life that dates
back to before this time. Tiny grains of a phosphate mineral called
appetite, often produced by living organisms, were found. Also carbon
in the rock with a ratio of isotope 12 to isotope 13 indicative of
life. In 2002 scientists suggested that formations were caused by
molten rock at temperatures too hot for life.
(SFC, 11/7/96, p.A2)(PacDis, Winter ’97, p.34)(SFC,
5/27/02, p.A6)
3.8-2.5BYA Archaean Time. It lasted for over a
billion years and gave way to the Proterozoic Age.
(www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/precambrian/archaean.html)
3.6Bil BC Fossils of bacteria from Western Australia
and south Africa date to about this time.
(SFC, 8/23/96, p.A21)(NH, 7/98, p.22)
3.6 Billion Scientists believe that a comet crashed
into the moon about this time and made a huge crater in which ice was
believed detected in 1996.
(SFC, 12/3/96, p.A2)
3.6 Billion Crystallized carbonate minerals formed on
a piece of rock on Mars that was later knocked into space and became a
meteorite that then fell to Earth in Antarctica about 11,000 BC. The
environment of Mars was hospitable to life.
(SFC, 8/7/96, p.A9)(SFC, 8/9/96, p.A15)(SFC, 9/1/96,
p.A22)
3.6-2.6 Billion Katarchaean
time. The crust of the earth seems to have acquired both granitic and
basaltic rocks. The continental shields formed.
(DD-EVTT, p.89,139)
3.5Bil BC Astronomers in 2007 found evidence that
most, if not all, huge galaxies in the far reaches of the universe
generated cavernous black holes during their youth, when about 3.5
billion years old.
(AFP, 10/26/07)
3.5Bil BC Earth's first fossils, single-celled
bacterial filaments, appear in rocks so dated. Rocks from the Ukraine
are said to give radiometric dates of this age.
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, R. Gore,
p.128)(DD-EVTT, p.139)
3.5Bil BC The Apex Chert of Australia indicate that
by this time at least 11 kinds of bacteria existed.
(PacDis, Winter ’97, p.34)
3.5Bil BC The first fossils of cyanobacteria appeared.
(USAT, 8/5/99, p.1D)
3.5-3.3 Billion Life originated about this time.
(DD-EVTT, p.139)
3.47 Billion An asteroid some 12 miles wide struck
the earth. Scientists in 2002 reported debris from the asteroid in both
South Africa and Australia.
(SFC, 8/23/02, p.A11)
3.41 Billion In 2004 Michael Tice, Stanford graduate
student, report finding evidence of fossilized microbes of this age
from a mountain near Barberton, South Africa.
(SFC, 9/30/04, p.A2)
3.4Bil BC Scientists in 2006 reported that
stromatolites in western Australia, created about this time, were
likely formed when dirt sediments mixed with carbon dioxide, expelled
from bacteria, along with water and minerals trapped in the microbe’s
sticky mucilage.
(SFC, 6/8/06, p.A6)
3.4 Billion The earliest greenstone belts of the
Canadian shield were small, and seem to have been deposited in definite
sags or basins in the granitic crust. Rocks of this age have been
identified by isotope dating in Transvaal and Rhodesia. They include
17,000 meters of volcanic rock seemingly floating in a sea of granite.
(DD-EVTT, p.142)(DD-EVTT, p.147)
The Fig Tree Series of Rhodesia
show remains of algae, bacteria, fungi, and other plants in shales and
cherts of which this is the oldest. There seems little reason to doubt
that photosynthesis was established by this time.
(DD-EVTT, p.158)
3.3 B +/- 200 Million At least five of the shield
regions were intruded by large masses of basaltic rocks called
anorthosites.
(DD-EVTT, p.138)
3.3-2.5 Billion Basalt floods inundated the
greenstone (metamorphosed rocks that were once basaltic lavas and
ashes) basins.
(DD-EVTT, p.138)
3.2 Billion The fossilized remains of threadlike
microbes from this time were identified by an Australian researcher
looking at the sulphide rock formation at Pilbara Craton.
(SFC, 6/8/00, p.A10)
3.2 Billion The bacterium Eobacterium isolatum from
the eastern part of South Africa dates to at least this age.
Single-celled blue-green algae also date back to this time.
(E&IH, 1973, p.111)
3.2-2.8 Billion The lighter materials bearing with
them most of the radioactive elements in the earth would have been left
behind near the outer part of the planet and during this time their
heat production would have been three or four times what it is now and
it would have been generated by the elements thorium, potassium, and
rubidium as well as by uranium.
(DD-EVTT, p.88)
3.1-2.3 Billion Two great episodes of metamorphism
and granite intrusions into the Australian shield are known in this
period. Radio isotope dates cluster around 3.1 and 2.65 Billion.
(DD-EVTT, p.150)
3.0 Billion The oldest African granites are about
this age. The oldest water laid sedimentary rocks are about this age.
Grains of pyrite, an iron sulfide mineral, in these sediments were not
oxidized. This indicates that there was little or no oxygen around at
the time.
(DD-EVTT, p.147)(DD-EVTT, p.152)
3.0 Billion The Earth day is only 6 hours long.
Scientists say they learned this by counting growth rings in
3-billion-year-old "whatchamacallits."
(SFC, 5/11/96, p.E-4)
3-2 Billion Sedimentary strata of this age contain
unique layers of iron oxide precipitated on shallow sea floors from the
combination of iron and oxygen contained in seawater. Younger strata
lack this type of sedimentary iron but do contain red iron oxides from
the combination of atmospheric oxygen and iron. This indicates that the
plants had begun to create more free oxygen than the oceans could
absorb. Analysis in 1999 indicated that plants invaded land from fresh
water rather than from the sea.
(E&IH, 1973, p.120)(SFC, 8/5/99, p.A6)
3.0-1.9 Billion The Saamo-Karelian structural zone in
the north-east of the Baltic shield evolved in this time and contains
highly metamorphosed rocks and granites.
(DD-EVTT, p.144)
2.7 Billion The oldest stromatolites, cabbage-shaped
laminated bodies of limestone or silica, are at least this old and
indicate that photosynthesis had been developed by then. Today such
structures are produced by blue-green algae living in tropical tidal
waters.
(DD-EVTT, p.158)
2.7 Billion In 1999 Australian geologists under
Jochen J. Brocks reported fossil "biomolecules" from this time. Traces
of steranes produced by eukaryotes, and methylhopanes from
cyanobacteria were reported.
(SFC, 8/13/99, p.A1,21)
2.6 Billion African rocks from South Africa’s Eastern
Transvaal in 2000 indicated primitive microbes on dry land from about
this time.
(SFC, 12/1/00, p.A21)
2.6-2.0 Billion Many continental movements and
collisions during this Archaean time. We can draw notions of how the
Canadian shield formed. Possibly there were four primary continental
nuclei to start with--slabs or "bergs" of granitic material which had
somehow arisen from the mantle. They have been called the Slave,
Hudson, Ungava and Superior proto-continents and they already existed
at the earliest Archaean time.
(DD-EVTT, p.139)
2.6-2.5 Billion The great Kenoran
orogeny spread its convulsive effects throughout the Canadian shield
before the proterozoic sediments were deposited.
(DD-EVTT, p.142)
2.5 Billion The Proterozoic Age began.
(SFC, 8/13/99, p.A21)
2.5 Billion The center of the North American
continent has rocks older than this age.
(E&IH, 1973, p.82)
2.5 Billion Oxygen began to appear on Earth.
(USAT, 8/5/99, p.1D)
2.5-1 Billion Rocks surrounding the center of the
North American continent show this age range.
(E&IH, 1973, p.82)
2.5BYA – 543MYA Proterozoic Era
(www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/precambrian/proterozoic.html)
2.4 Billion The Peninsular India shield’s oldest
structural belt, the Dharwar, lies in the south-west of the country.
Very probably the Dharwar belt acted as a kind of stable nucleus to
which other belts became attached.
(DD-EVTT, p.146)
2.3-1.5 Billion The Sveco-Fennian structural zone in
the south part of the Baltic shield formed in this time.
(DD-EVTT, p.144)
2.2 Billion Rust appeared in rocks indicating the
accumulation of oxygen.
(USAT, 8/5/99, p.1D)
2.1-1.9 Billion Oxygen accumulation rapidly
increased. Large single-celled organisms appeared. Multi-celled life
originated. In 2003 Nick Lane authored "Oxygen: The Molecule That Made
the World."
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, R. Gore, p.129)(NH,
Jul, p.60)
2 Bil BC The first traces of extensive ice cover
appeared in the geological record only in the Late Precambrian Era,
more than 2 billion years ago.
(NOHY, Weiner, 3/90, p.5)
2 Bil BC The Grand Canyon floor was formed. Joseph
Wood Krutch in 1957 wrote his book "Grand Canyon: Today and All Its
Yesterdays." In 1998 Stephen J. Pyne wrote: "How the Canyon Became
Grand."
(SFEC, 10/4/98, BR p.12)
2 Bil BC Radiometric ages of the Eburnian structural
provinces in west Africa. North of the city of San Luis in Brazil the
Precambrian is 2 billion years old. More parallel data at 550 million.
(DD-EVTT, p.194)
2 Bil BC Fossils found in rock from Ontario, Canada
consist of bacteria and blue-green algae.
(E&IH, 1973, p.111)
2 Bil BC In the 1950s Elso Barghoorn and Stanley
Tyler reported fossils of unicellular life in chert beds at least this
old.
(NH, 7/98, p.22)
c2 Bil BC A Mount Everest-sized object crashed near
Sudbury, Canada about this time and left a crater covering 1,800 sq. km.
(PacDis, Winter ’97, p.35)
c2Bil BC Scientists in 1972 discovered an extinct
natural nuclear reactor in a uranium mine in Gabon. Research soon
revealed that it had operated intermittently for a few million years
about 2 billion years ago.
(SFC, 11/29/04, p.A4)
2 Bil BC A meteorite impacted Earth in South Africa.
The discovery of the Vredefort Crater, 250-300 km in diameter, was
announced in 1994.
(www.hartrao.ac.za/other/vredefort/vredefort.html)
2-1 Billion Biological evolution became greatly
enriched by the invention of sexual reproduction.
(E&IH, 1973, p.119)
1.85 Billion In Ontario, Canada, near the town of
Sudbury, a meteor that was at least 10 miles across struck down. The
remaining crater is 60 by 45 miles and was found to contain a profusion
of "buckyballs" (peculiar hollow molecules of carbon) with samples of
ancient star stuff packed inside.
(SFC, 4/12/96, p.A-7)
1.8 Billion An orogenic period in the Australian
shield.
(DD-EVTT, p.150)
Eastern coast of Antarctica has
yielded rocks thought to be this old.
(DD-EVTT, p.150)
1.7 Billion The Hudsonian orogeny of the Canadian
shield.
(DD-EVTT, p.142)
1.7-1.2 Billion Another bout of anorthosite
intrusions from below into most of the shields. Anorthosite has
virtually never penetrated the crust since then.
(DD-EVTT, p.138)
1.6 Billion Late Precambrian phase of the Siberian
(Angara) Shield saw the spread of both sandy strata and limestones.
Many of these beds contain great numbers of stromatolites, the
limestone structures produced by lime-secreting algae. These large
mound-like growths, a meter or more high, grew in the intertidal zones
of the coast with warm waves splashing between them.
(DD-EVTT, p.145)
The Eastern Ghats belt of the
Indian shield shows dates of this time.
(DD-EVTT, p.146)
1.5 Billion Four regions had emerged as stable area
in the evolving crust of Africa. These were a large part of west
Africa, two large regions in what is now central Africa, and an area
now occupied by Rhodesia and the Transvaal. From this time on these
regions have had virtually no severe geological disturbance.
(DD-EVTT, p.148)
1.5-1 Billion BP
On Mars the Hesperian period when
surface waters had dried up but still lay in large quantities below the
surface.
(SFC, 7/7/97, p.A4)
1.4 Billion Another orogenic period in the Australian
shield.
(DD-EVTT, p.150)
1.35 Billion The Elsonian orogeny of the Canadian
shield.
(DD-EVTT, p.143)
1.3 Billion Fungi may have originated about this time.
(SFC, 8/10/01, p.D3)
1.2 Billion Scientists reported in 2002 that
sandstone rocks from the Sterling Range of Australia showed evidence of
wormlike creatures from about this time.
(SFC, 5/10/02, p.A2)
1.2-1.0 Billion Researchers reported in the journal
Science that the emergence of true animals dates back to this period.
The creatures would have been very small and soft-bodied and not have
left fossil remains.
(SFC, 10/25/96, p.A2)
1.2-.9 Billion The Sveco-Norwegian structural zone of
the Baltic shield in south-west Sweden and southern Norway came into
existence in this time.
(DD-EVTT, p.144)
1Bil BC Major continental collisions.
(DD-EVTT, p.139)
1Bil BC The Satpura belt of the Indian shield beneath
the edges of the Deccan traps dates to this time.
(DD-EVTT, p.146)
1Bil BC In 1998 trace fossils of worm burrows were
reported from what was a shallow sea in Central India about this time.
(SFC, 10/1/98, p.A2)
1Bil BC A worm later named Urbilateria lived about
this time and gave rise to two of the great animal kingdoms: the
protostomes, whose members include insects, mollusks and all manner of
worms; and deuterostomes, whose surviving members include all
vertebrates.
(Econ, 4/21/07, p.90)
1Bil BC Fossils from rock in central Australia
include plant organisms of many cells.
(E&IH, 1973, p.112)
1Bil BC A meteor named Nakhla arrived from Mars more
than a billion years ago.
(SJSVB, 9/9/96, p.14A)
1 Billion--800 Million Metazoans diverge from
bacteria, fungi, and algae. Oxygen levels rise. Plant life spread from
the oceans to land.
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993 p.128)(SFC, 8/10/01,
p.D3)
1 Billion--600 Million Ediacara fauna, the first
Metazoans.
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, R. Gore, p.129)
c1 Billion - 350 Million The mini-continent of
Avalon. When Africa, Europe and North America were separated, granite
of Avalon stuck to the East Coast of North America.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.50)
955 Million The Grenvillian orogeny of the Canadian
shield.
(DD-EVTT, p.142)
900-800 Million The Kibaran orogenies welded wide
strips of metamorphosed granitic crust around the margins of the
central and southern cratons of Africa.
(DD-EVTT, p.148)
800 Million Hundreds of fossil specimens of primitive
sea animals have been discovered in South Australia in strata older
than Cambrian and perhaps of this age. A segmented worm, Spriggina
floundersi was about 2 inches in diameter. A jellyfish-like animal,
Cyclomedusa davidi, was about 1 inch long.
(E&IH, 1973, p.111)
750 Million Scientists in 2004 reported that Earth
may have been covered in snow at this time. Much of Earth, welded into
a single massive continent known as Rodinia, began to break up.
(SFC, 3/18/04, p.A4)
750 Million The India shield dated at this time:
North of the Satpura belt lies the Arawalli belt and imposed upon at
least part of this is the Delhi belt.
(DD-EVTT, p.146)
750-580 Mil Scientists in 2000 proposed that 2-4
cycles, lasting 10 million years each, of freezing and global warming
took place during this period. Volcanic activity was responsible for
the rising temperatures. The oceans may have frozen in this period and
it has been called the Snowball Earth era.
(SFC, 4/8/00, p.A7)(SFC, 8/10/01, p.D3)
650Mil BC In 2008 Australian scientists said they had
discovered in an outback mountain range a reef that was under water at
this time.
(AFP, 9/22/08)
620Mil BC In 1975 animal fossils of about this time
were discovered in North Carolina.
(www.todayinsci.com/6/6_04.htm)
c600 Mil Late Precambrian: Eocambrian period shows
evidence of an ice-age involving a large part of the earth’s surface.
The picture is one of a world devoid of vegetation, much of it in the
grip of snow and ice.
(DD-EVTT, p.161-162)
c 600 Mil Pre-Paleozoic-Cambrian: The Adelaide
series of Southern Australia is a group of sandy rocks laid down over a
long period of pre-Paleozoic and Cambrian time. Here was a gently but
persistently subsiding basin. it existed for a 100 million years or so,
until the late Cambrian when there was a full-scale orogeny.
(DD-EVTT, p.235)
600 Million This begins the Phanerozoic eon and
continues to the present. The Previous span of time, six to eight times
as long is called the Cryptozoic eon. An eon in the American system is
a period of one billion years.
(DD-EVTT, p.35,312)
The Phanerozoic eon began perhaps
with a single continent, Pangaea, in process of breaking up. This was
Pangaea I, ...only to return to each other’s company at the end of the
early Paleozoic.
(DD-EVTT, p.225,230)
It seems Pangaea I lay
predominantly in the southern hemisphere with the Gondwana continents
grouped tightly together and twisted round through about 180 degrees
and ‘North America’ and ‘Europe’ strung out a little to the east of
South America and west of Angara (north-east Asia). No trace of land
plants was to be seen.
(DD-EVTT, p.231)
600 Million Glaciers near the equator reached sea
level.
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, R. Gore, p.128)
600 Million Oxygen had risen to occupy 1 per cent or
more of its present level in the atmosphere by the dawn of the Cambrian
period.
(DD-EVTT, p.160)
600 Million The outer edges of the North American
continent consist of rocks younger than this age.
(E&IH, 1973, p.83)
600 Million Layers of lava and ash from volcanic
activity of this time were later evident at Green Gardens,
Newfoundland, Canada.
(SSFC, 8/17/03, p.C7)
600-580 Mil Fossils of primitive multi-celled embryos
with no bones or shells, possibly dating to this time, were found in
1998 in a phosphate mine near the town of Weng ‘an in China’s Guizhou
province. Scientists named the bilaterians Vernanimalcula guizhouena
(small spring animal).
(SFC, 2/5/98, p.A1,11)(SFC, 6/3/04, A2)
600-543 Mil The Ediacaran animals began to appear
according to the fossil record, named after the locality in Australia
where they were first discovered.
(NH, 7/98, p.58)
600-500 Mil Cambrian period of the Paleozoic Era.
Life comes ashore, the first coral reefs, and fish appear.
(DD-EVTT, p.21)
600-500 Early fossils from the Burgess Shale in
British Columbia and from China already show a clear distinction
between the ancestors of spiders and insects.
(PacDis, Summer ’97, p.3)
600-450 Mil The dinoflagellates originated about this
time.
(Nat. Hist. 3/96, p.17)
580 Million The last planet wide glaciation occurred
around this time.
(NH, Jul, p.16)
575-160 Mil Rangeomorphs, a world-wide feathery life
form, lived during this period known as the Ediactaran. They fed by
filtering tiny organisms from seawater were later considered as the 1st
examples of complex animal life.
(SFC, 8/20/04, p.A12)
570 Million The oldest triploblastic animals,
preserved as phosphatized embryos in rocks from southern China, were
reported discovered in 1998.
(NH, 7/98, p.62)
570-230 Mil N. America has several well-known arches
and domes south of the Canadian Shield, and a few to the north of it
too. They seem to have originated mostly in the Paleozoic era, with
little movement taking place in the Mesozoic or Cainozoic. From what we
can see of the Cambrian and early Ordovician rocks, these warps were
not present in the basement then.
(DD-EVTT, p.171,172)
570-230 Mil In northern Alberta is the Peace River
Arch; the Transcontinental Arch extends from Minnesota to Arizona and
in Montana is the Montana Dome. The Ozark Mountains lie on the site of
a dome and from Nashville, Tennessee, north to Michigan lies the
Cincinnati Arch. Between Peace River, north-west Canada, and Montana
and occupying much of Saskatchewan is the Williston Basin. Michigan
lies four-square upon the Michigan Basin, while much of Illinois and
Indiana is underlain by the Illinois Basin. Most of these broad, gentle
features developed during Paleozoic time and have been dormant ever
since.
(DD-EVTT, p.172)
570-230 Mil The Caledonian syncline in Europe and the
Appalacian syncline in North America is the region between the Canadian
and Baltic Shields, and stretched from the northern margins of these
basement blocks through what is now western Scandinavia, east
Greenland, and Britain into the Appalachians and on into south-eastern
USA. These are the most closely studied of the early Paleozoic
geosynclines.
(DD-EVTT, p.233)
560 Mil BCE In 2003 a fossil of a 2.56-inch fishlike
animal from the Flinders Ranges of southern Australia was believed to
be at least 560 million years old, 30 million years older than the
previous record.
(AP, 10/23/03)
550 Million The marella, a fossil of the Cambrian.
(DD-EVTT,illustr.#15)
Radiometric ages of the
pan-African structural provinces in west Arica parallel the age of rock
south and east of Sao Luis in Brazil. It all seems good evidence that
the continents were joined together 550 million years ago but had begun
to separate before 50 million years ago.
(DD-EVTT, p.194)
550 Million A gene that regulates limb formation in
insects called the Distal-less gene was considered to be at least this
old.
(NH, 2/97, p.31)
545 Million The emergence of higher animals was dated
to about this time until 1996 when researchers gathered data that
suggested the emergence began 1.2 billion years ago over a span of 200
million years.
(SFC, 10/25/96, p.A2)
c545-500 A 2nd period of crater forming impacts
bombarded the Earth at about the time of the Cambrian explosion.
(SFC, 3/10/00, p.A4)
543 Million A mass extinction of unknown cause wiped
out the Ediacaran primitives and initiated the Cambrian explosion that
gave modern triploblasts an opportunity to shine.
(NH, 7/98, p.65)
543-530 Mil The first phase of the Cambrian is called
the Manakayan, and featured small shelly fossils.
(NH, 7/98, p.60)
543-490 Million Cambrian period
(www.paleoportal.org/time_space/period.php?period_id=16)
Over 900 species of marine creatures are known from the lower Cambrian
rocks. The Cambrian sea floor was peopled with a great variety of
trilobites. Nine-tenths of all Cambrian fossils known are trilobites.
Almost all of the five great divisions or super-families of them alive
during this period died out at the end of it.
(DD-EVTT, p.248)
Small-shelled bivalve creatures
known as brachiopods were mostly of the horny kind in the Cambrian.
(DD-EVTT, p.249)
Among the stationary animals to
colonize the sea floor, the sponges and corals were both much in
evidence. There were other animals, known as archaeocyathids, that seem
to have been a cross between the two and to have had a cone-shaped
housing of calcium carbonate 10-20 cm. high. These creatures grew
together in clusters that were quite like mats or thickets of small
corals in California, Newfoundland, Australia and Russia.
(DD-EVTT, p.250)
There were many different classes
of echinodermata, the ‘spiny-skinned,’ in the Cambrian seas.
(DD-EVTT, p.251)
(In N. America) During early and
mid-Cambrian times sea level rose steadily, or the basement sank
uniformly, until waters spread across the entire continent. Although it
was extensive it seems to have nowhere as much as 30 meters deep.
Limestone beds near the geosynclines in the east and west reach 600-700
meters in thickness.
(DD-EVTT, p.172-173)
543-248MYA Paleozoic Era
(www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/paleozoic/paleozoic.html)
The Paleozoic Era is
characterized by the appearance of marine invertebrates, primitive
fishes, land plants, and primitive reptiles. It includes the Cambrian,
Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, and
Permian periods.
(DD-EVTT, p.21)(AHD, 1971, p.944)
540Mil BC Precambrian/Cambrian boundary. The
"Cambrian explosion" occurred and many families of multi-celled
creatures began to develop. It was later believed that this occurred as
a result of the formation of hard shells.
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, p.129)(SFC, 2/5/98,
p.A1)(Econ, 6/2/07, p.90)
540Mil BC The common ancestor of insects and spiders
lived at least this long ago in the ocean.
(PacDis, Summer ’97, p.3)
535 Million The earliest echinoderm fossils date to
this time.
(NH, 12/98, p.41)
535-520 Mil In 1997 scientists proposed that the
Earth underwent a continental flip during this period. Concentrated
land mass near the poles lead to an imbalance that resulted in a shift
by centrifugal force of excess bulk to the equator. Siberia and
northern Europe were large islands called Baltica. The North American
part of Laurentia went from the south pole to straddle the equator.
Northern Europe slid south. East Africa went from the tropics to the
south pole. The changes took place but the reasons for the change were
still controversial. The process was suspected to have contribute to
the great explosion of bio-diversity known as the "Cambrian explosion."
(NPR, SFC, 7/25/97, p.A1)
530 Million Chengjiang fauna from the Yunnan Province
of China. Specimens include: the arthropod Jianfengia, Facivermis,
Trilobites (arthropod to 27"), Eldonia (a possible echinoderm),
Microdictyon, Dinomischus, Sponges, Hyolith (possible mollusk),
Anomalocaris, Xianguangia, and early brachiopods.
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, R. Gore, p.133)
530 Million Fishlike creatures, early agnathans, with
marks of an early spine were found in 1998 in the Chengjiang fossil
field.
(SFC, 11/4/99, p.A8)
530 Million During the Cambrian explosion the various
animal phyla were established. This date was pushed back in 1996 to 1.2
billion years.
(WSJ, 9/25/96, p.A23)(SFC, 10/25/96, p.A2)
530-520 Mil The 2nd two phases of the Cambrian are
called the Tommotian and Atdabanian. The Cambrian explosion featured
the first appearance of all animal phyla with skeletons subject to easy
preservation.
(NH, 7/98, p.60)
525 Million Sirius Passet fauna from Greenland.
Specimens include: Sponges, Hyoliths, Trilobites, Unnameds (an
arthropod), and Halkieriids (possible mollusks).
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, R. Gore, p.128)
515 Million Residue of evaporated seawater trapped in
rock salts from this time contained three times as much calcium as
samples from 545 million years ago.
(NG, 11/04, Geographica)
515Mil BC The Burgess Shale, a rock formation amid
the glaciated mountains from British Columbia to Utah, created by mud
slides that swept shallow water Cambrian creatures over a marine cliff
and buried them almost instantly. Specimens include: Pikaia (a
chordate, ancestor of fish, reptiles, and mammals), Odontogriphus,
Amiskwia, Ottoia (a Priapulid worm), Wiwaxia (a Polychaete worm or
mollusk), Burgessochaeta (an annelid worm), Opabinia, Sanctacaris
(arthropod, forerunner of spiders and scorpions), Canadaspis
(arthropod, early crustacean), Aysheaia (possible arthropod), Eldonia,
Hyolith, Brachiopods, Dinomischus, Anomalocaris, Sponges and
Trilobites. In 1989 Stephen Jay Gould authored "Wonderful Life: The
Burgess Shale and the Nature of History." In 1998 Simon Conway Morris
authored "The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of
Animals."
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, p.124)(NH, 12/98,
p.48)(SFC, 11/5/07, p.A3)
510 Million End of Cambrian
(NG, V184, No. 4, Oct. 1993, R. Gore, p.122)
By the end of the Cambrian
Pangaea had split into four continents. The intervening seaways became
the sites where the sediments of the Appalacian, Hercynian, and Uralian
geosynclines were to form.
(DD-EVTT, p.225)
Towards the end of the Cambrian
times there were shallow seas throughout much of the equatorial region.
Lime-secreting organisms, plant and animal, flourished and great
volumes of carbonate mud accumulated over much of the previously sandy
sea floor.
(DD-EVTT, p.232)
In Southern Australia there was a
full scale orogeny. Nothing so rigorous was in progress anywhere else
in the world. No late Cambrian mountain-building episodes are known
elsewhere.
(DD-EVTT, p.235)
Mollusks first come to our
attention.
(DD-EVTT, p.250)
510-445 Mil ORDOVICIAN PERIOD
510-445 Million Years Ago [see 490-443MYA]
(www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/ordovician/ordovician.html)
c507-492 Mil In 2000 scientists reported that they
had found a dramatic shifting of the Earth's crust that tilted the
whole globe some 90 degrees over a period of 15 million years about
this time. The shift was suggested as a cause of the "Cambrian
explosion" of multicellular organisms."
(SFC, 1/21/00, p.A3)
505Mil BC Scientists in 2007 reported that that
fossils of tiny jellyfish, most barely a quarter inch in diameter, had
been found in the Burgess shale of Utah and dated to this time, when
shallow seas covered the area.
(SFC, 11/5/07, p.A3)
500 Million Geophysicists believe that at this time
it took the planet only 20 hours to make it through the day.
(NG, March 1990, J. Boslough p. 121)
500 Million A 30-mile size crater, a mile underneath
the bed of Lake Huron, just north of Port Huron, Michigan, marks the
impact of a meteor. It was discovered in 1990 by scientists from the
Geological Survey of Canada.
(LSA, Spring 1995, p.31)
500 Million Gondwanaland seems to have been formed
about this time.
(DD-EVTT, p.203)
c500 Million Vertebrates and insects (arthropods) had
a common ancestor about half a billion years ago.
(PacDis, Fall/’96, p.48)(NH, 2/97, p.68)
c500 Million Bone evolved about this time.
(NH, 6/97, p.14)
c500 Mil Sex was first recognized in the fossil
records more than 500 million years ago.
(Reuters, 9/13/02)
c500 Mil In 1995 John A. Long authored “The Rise of
Fishes: Five Hundred Years of Evolution.”
(NH, 3/1/04, p.77)
500-480 Mil Scientists in 2002 reported that
sandstone from this period found north of lake Ontario, Canada,
contained tracks of foot-long critters with at least 8 pairs of walking
legs. They may have been euthycarcinoids, whose segmented bodies
included outer shells and long legs.
(SFC, 6/4/02, p.A2)
500-440 Million Ordovician period. Nearly all the
continent of N. America was covered by transgressive seas in the
Ordovician and the Devonian, and again in the Cretaceous.
(DD-EVTT, p.21,171)
500-435 Million Ordovician period.
(GH-ADH, p.25)
From simple,
perhaps segmented ancestors living on the sea floor there arose in
Ordovician time snails, clams, and many kinds of squid-like creatures
in cone shaped shells up to a meter or two in length.
(DD-EVTT, p.250)
500-435 Million By Ordovician time large fragments
were drifting away from the rest (of Pangaea). In North America, Europe
and on the margins of Asia violent volcanic activity broke out and
earth movements grew in size and frequency along the eastern margins of
North America and the facing coasts of Europe.
(DD-EVTT, p.232)
At the end of the early
Ordovician epoch the gains won by the sea from the land were rapidly
lost, uplift of the shield or the lowering of sea level affected
thousands of square km. of the continent. By late Ordovician time the
entire continental interior was submerged: from Mexico to the Arctic
islands and Greenland the sea spread out. In the west it merged wit5h
the deeper waters of the Cordilleran geosyncline and in the Appalacian
area earth movements had given rise to a land mass from which mud and
sand were now coming.
(DD-EVTT, p.173)
500-435 Million The Appalacian ocean began closing
from Ordovician times onwards.
(DD-EVTT, p.226)
From paleo-magnetic evidence and
fossils the inference is drawn that the Ordovician equator ran across
North America from California to northern Greenland, across the British
isles and over central Europe.
(DD-EVTT, p.233)
There is the remarkable evidence
of an Ordovician glacial period in the Sahara area. Probably this part
of Africa was then sufficiently far from the equatorial zone, fed by
snow and high enough to preserve ice for several million years.
(DD-EVTT, p.235-236)
Paleomagnetic data give
indications that this part of Africa and the northern end of South
America were indeed in far southerly latitudes. Cold polar winds would
have swept moisture up from the southern ocean into the continental
interior.
(DD-EVTT, p.245)
490MYA-443MYA The Ordovician Period [see 510-445MYA]
(www.paleoportal.org/time_space/period.php?period_id=15)
c470 Mil Liverworts made a leap from the oceans to
dry land. In 1998 scientists found that liverworts lacked 3 pieces of
ancient genetic material called introns that is present in most plants.
Liverworts were like aquatic green algae in this respect.
(SFC, 8/25/98, p.A4)
470-400 Million The gradual closure of the
Caledonian and Appalacian geosynclines in the mid-Ordovician and
Devonian brought about a series of orogenies that had drastic effects
in a region stretching from what is now Spitsbergen in the north as far
south as New York.
(DD-EVTT, p.234)
The stone corals, or at least
several extinct branches of that group, put in an appearance in
mid-Ordovician time. Together with lime-secreting algae and, locally,
the colonies of calcareous bryozoa or moss-animals, they produced a
completely new kind of sea floor.
(DD-EVTT, p.251)
The oldest pieces of bony
material occur in middle Ordovician marine rocks in America.
(DD-EVTT, p.252)
450 Million A 650- to 700-foot meteorite crashed into
the earth at speeds up to 67,500 mph. The impact dislodged rocks and
created a massive hole in a 4-mile area called Rock Elm about 70 miles
east of Minneapolis, Wisc.
(AP, 4/26/04)
443-417MYA Silurian Period
(www.paleoportal.org/time_space/period.php?period_id=14)
The early Silurian was a time
when the sea withdrew once again to the north and south before
returning in full flood to cover virtually the whole continent (N.
America) again. Throughout this active period the Transcontinental Arch
generally separated the seas of the Mississippi Valley and the
Williston Basin. The Ozark Dome and the Appalacian fold belt similarly
stood out against the waves.
(DD-EVTT, p.21)(DD-EVTT, p.174)
The Silurian continued the spread
of very shallow seas over much of northern and western South America
and north-western Africa and parts of Arabia. The sediments deposited
in them were muddy and sandy, not at all like the great carbonates of
the North American and Russian cratons.
(DD-EVTT, p.236)
Simple, jawless marine
vertebrates make an appearance in the Silurian scene.
(DD-EVTT, p.252)
440 Million Ice Age in the Sahara.
(DD-EVTT, p.21)
440 Million A five-mile size crater in Michigan in
Cass County by the village Calvin Center marks the impact of a meteor
the size of a football field. It was discovered in 1987.
(LSA, Spring 1995, p.31)
440-425 Million The oldest known mass extinction, the
Ordovician extinction, occurred about this time. A long ice age
followed, but it is unknown if this was a cause or an effect. It was
later speculated that a supernova within 10,000 light years of Earth
may have been the cause.
(SFEC, 8/22/99, Par p.12)(SFC, 1/8/04, p.A4)
430 Million Aquatic animals began to develop jaws.
(NYT, 6/7/96, p.B1)
c430 Mil Late Silurian In late
Silurian times there was a shallowing of the seas across North America
and they may have withdrawn completely from several regions. To the
north-west and in the east large expanses of the sea were cut off from
the open water. Under the hot, arid climate these giant lagoon-like
areas acted as great evaporating basins. In the Michigan basin and the
New York area, for example, as much as 900 meters of salt was laid down.
(DD-EVTT, p.174)
Green, buff and russet colored
patches of vegetation may in late Silurian days have begun to spring up
beside the rivers, lakes and other waterways.
(DD-EVTT, p.246)
By late Silurian times some of
the earliest and most primitive vertebrates were indeed poking about in
fresh waters.
(DD-EVTT, p.252)
425 Million British researchers reported that an
ancestor of modern water fleas, found in rocks in Britain, is the
earliest clear example of a male animal. The fossil crustacean, named
Colymbosathon ecplecticos (swimmer with a large penis), is unusually
well-preserved, allowing scientists to see it had gills and an advanced
circulatory system.
(Reuters, 12/5/03)(SFC, 12/5/03, p.A2)
420-375 Million The climax of the closure of the
Caledonian and Appalacian geosynclines in Siluro-Devonian times is
known as the Caledonian orogeny. At this time the western and central
parts of Laurasia were brought together in a clinch that lasted until
late in the Jurassic period when the Atlantic rift began. The Ural sea
remained open.
(DD-EVTT, p.234)
Continue 415 MIL