Geologic Time Activity - Cloverleaf Local



Geologic Time Activity

Compare geologic time to the length of a football field, which is 100 yards long. Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago. That's 4,600,000,000! If you divided 4.6 billion by 100, then each yard equals 46,000,000 years, and each ten yard section equals 460,000,000 years.

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Making a Time Line

Draw a model of a football field. Starting at the left (4.6 billion years ago) and "moving forward in time," label the 10-yard lines in years. Then, using different colored markers, draw a horizontal line to show the beginning and end of each of the following periods and eras.

1. Cenozoic Era (65 million years ago [mya] to present)

2. Triassic (245-208 mya), Jurassic (208-146 mya), and Cretaceous (146-65 mya) periods

3. Paleozoic Era (570-245 mya)

4. Proterozoic Era (2500-570 mya)

5. Archaean Era (3800-2500 mya)

6. Hadean Era (4600-3800 mya)

Add the historic and prehistoric events from your list that you made at the beginning of the class. Also add at least ten other important events in geologic history. Use the back of the page and books from my cupboard to help you find the dates for them.

Challenge: Make a circle, pie diagram, or clock that shows the amount of time in degrees (there are 360 degrees in a circle) or in percentages for the following:

1. a clock of the 4.6 billion year history

2. a clock of the Mesozoic (Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous)

3. a clock of the Mesozoic to the present.

Some Important Dates (subject to revison!) in the History of the Earth:

|Millions of Years Ago |Event |

|4600 |Origin of the Earth |

|3900 |Oldest Dated Crustal Rocks |

|3800 |Oldest Evidence for Life |

|2000 |First Oxygen Atmosphere/Ozone Layer Forms |

|900 |Oldest Metazoan Fossils |

|510 |Oldest Fossil Fish |

|458 |First Land Plants |

|440 |Bedrock in Oxford Forms/Ohio near the equator |

|375 |That important first step: Amphibians Evolve |

|245 |Huge Mass Extinction at End of Permian Period/ |

| |Close of the Paleozoic Era |

|200 |First Mammals |

|160 |First Birds |

|145 |Atlantic Ocean first opens |

|130 |Angiosperms (Flowering Plants) on the Scene |

|65 |Adaptive Radiation of Mammals/Dinosaurs Go Extinct/ |

| |Close of the Mesozoic Era/Beginning of the Cenozoic Era |

|3.4 |New discoveries of (LUCY)Australopithecus afarensis fossils from Ethiopia--Males and females show sexual |

| |dimorphism |

|2 |Pleistocene Ice Age begins/Light from the Andromeda galaxy seen today left Andromeda 2 x 106 years ago! |

|.600 |Age of Homo erectus fossils from Ethiopia |

|.125 |Oldest rocks in the Bahamas |

|.100 |Homo sapiens appears in the fossil record |

|.015 |Last ice sheet retreats from Ohio |

|.007 |Grahams Harbor, San Salvador, Bahamas floods due to rising sea level after Ice sheets are reduced to |

| |modern day volume |

|.000503 |Columbus lands in New World |

|?? |Your Birthday |

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