Let's learn something about geologic time.
The intention to learn can better one's chances for learning something great. Come let's begin to learn something right now. If you already know a lot about geological time this may not be for you. I am just a beginner at this big topic. Perhaps the only thing I will do quickly here is to blunder. Still I will try to do well.
Just know it seems that learning about geologic time seems a bit like learning biology and some other such topics. People who know a lot about the topic seem to develop a language of their own, so just to begin, it looks like there is some new vocabulary to learn. It's like one has to know the magic words to work the magic spells.
We can begin by getting into the meaning of some of those words it does seem like magic sometimes, but more realistically it is just science. Still those words can carry a lot of meaning, and so can we. It can be great to discover or rediscover that often we find that the more meaning that comes into our lives the more satisfaction we find there.
Okay here we go. Geologic time has a different kind of time scale than we are accustomed to. Remember that I am just now learning these things so am not a great authority, but I am pretty honest. Anyway these geologic time people still use years, centuries and like that. Time that comes in equal units, each hour has the same number of minutes. Geological time is not all like that. Also even when they use the time we do, they tend to use some big numbers. Soon you won't be surprised to to hear talk of a time 541,000,000 years ago. But, in that amount of time one can find some surprising and interesting happenings.
I said that there would be some new vocabulary. We will want to get them into order and get to understand them. Here are some words which name divisions of the geological time scale: an Eon is an important one; other names for divisions or sections of time are Periods, Epochs, and Ages. We'll get them in some useful order and learn a bit about each.
The longest period of time which is "measured" seems to be the eon. Measured may not be exact here. The beginning of the eno is marked, but as of yet, it has no end. It has been divided into four eras, the Hadean, the Archean, the Protozoic or Protozoan, and the Phanerozoic. The beginnings and ends of these eras are marked by events or happenings. Geologically humans are part of this Phanerozoic era, which has not yet come to an end. The oldest era is the hadean, which is sometimes referred to as the Precambrian Super-eon.
Don't despair; it is a new language, but is not one of the hardest to learn. How long has it taken you to learn your native language? Are you still learning?
How old were you before you learned your language well enough? Have you found your work or street language differs from your home language? Have you found a sport which has a language of its own? You may have noticed that I am a bit like a three year old in the Geologic language. We are learning together.
I am not a teacher of this language, but I do know something about learning. It seems that no matter how we are taught we seem to learn by bits, mostly little bits. In time we come to see that some bits tend to stick together, that some seem to hang together pretty well. From there we often begin to learn more and better. So, long as we attend just a bit we grow in learning.
Now I got to thinking that I could have made a better start at learning about geological time. Maybe I should or should have started with the phanerozoic era which the largest time where we are. Still, if geologic time knowledge were like a big round ball that we wanted to learn about (never mind why!) we could begin anywhere we could and begin there and go on from there.
I expect to get things in more useful order as we go along. Soon you may see some bits seeming to tending to go together. I suspect that about now we are beginning to get familiar with some of the most useful vocabulary for understanding this kind of time.
We will begin to discover that there are six important measures of geological time and that they are: Age, Epoch. Period, Era, Eon. Oh, oh! that's only five. Well we have named five measures of geological time and it looks to me that we have named them in a useful order. Age is the shortest, epoch is longer, Period even longer, An era is longer than a Period, and a Eon is the longest and contains all the others.
So, it seems right to say that there are several Ages in an Epoch, several Epochs in a Period, several Periods in an Era, and several Eras in an Eon. Well, I think that we are wll on the way to knowing more about the subject than most people on Earth. I want to get us to a place whereat our understanding is even more useful.
We jumped to eons from its most recent age the Phanerozoic and know that an en on is full of it, that is that its full of its ages and alsoof epochs, periods, and eras. Did mention that the Phanerozoic began about 541,000,000 years ago or about 541 Mya and that it is still going on today. Mya stands for million years ago, and often saves us from writing so many zeros. Geologic time extends to times before we have discovered life. However, in many ages we look at age names often end in -zoic. Zoic seems to indicate cells, especially animal cells. We have a lot to learn. I can make mistakes and it is fair for you to correct me. This is an invitation for you to tell me of my mistakes to correct me.
Continuing our look at important vocabulary for this topic. Ihere review the times and indicate that there are indeed six are used:
A Super Eon is made up of eons. This is the sixth time which I left out earlier.
Eons are divided into Eras.
Eras are divided into Periods.
Periods are divided into Epochs.
Epochs are divided into Ages.
Ages can be measured chronologically, as in years.
So now, if you are smarter than I am, you may now be pretty sure that Ages are the smallest units of geologic time.
Well, I think we have made a great start even though I do not remember that Periods are made up of Epochs. It may be time to check out some important and interesting detail. It is good to remember as we go along this geologic road, that geological time study is a kind of science. Like science it begins with observation. An important observation in geology is that there are layers of earth and rock on earth. That much of the upper layers of earth are stratified has an importantly useful observation. Geologic time is a work in progress, and so details will change and major concepts may change.
Okay, here is a little more about eons, Eons have names. There geologic times like enos are sometimes begun with capital letters, and not just at the beginning of a sentence and sometimes they are not. And I do not know why. I do remember that an Archean is a specific eon and it names a specific set of happenings. The Archean begins with an especially notable event and ends with another such noteable event. We can check out those special events and may find them very interesting.
Eras and each and almost ever geological time is divided for the next geological time and is one good place to look for interesting happenings. The name of one particular erais the Mesozoic. It may already possible that we can already guess that the mesozoic begins and ends in especially interesting events and that it is very likely that those events will deal with some kinds of animals. Where is the animal event?
You would not really have to be a genius to understand that the geological time scale divides up the past of our Earth into scientifically meaningful periods, but you be pretty observant and smart too. If you are close to being a genius with special interests you might find an interesting, pathe, trial, or highway to orient you by checking out the dynamical time scale used in astronomy and physics. But that is an other story. If you are interested in this geologic time scale and find yourself learning stuff related to it, please share a bit of that which you learn with us. I could use your help and most of us would really enjoy a different point of view being expressed here.
Okay most of us may be interested in the stories; here we are interested in true stories. However, time can be important and interesting. Timing in a story can be very important. In a fiction detective novel change in our view of the timing could change our view of motive. In our geologic time ''scale'' the past is often more about order than about clocklike chronology. Often is about first this and then that or, first came the Flood and then came Abraham.
I will close this introductory piece with some reminders and no stories. This essay includes some notion of how to evaluate the stories this time scale canorient us to. The idea here is to try to get to true stories. True stories may be beyond us. Honest stories are easier to find, but still golden. I am grateful that so many individuals in this field are capable of such a find degree of honesty and practice it to our benefit. But in this field more than a notion of logic is needed. Those who wish to communicate well in this field must also have some command of the scientific method.
We can remember that the Phanerozoic eon is the current eon. It is notable that in this eon there is abundant animal life. In earlier eons there may by only cellular life. In the earliest eon we have not observed life. In the present of our Phanerozoic we it is possible to find our great variety of life. Life was not like this in earlier times it was very different, but may have had the great variety we benefit from.
We can find out what BP means and remember what Mya means. We can find out that was in Cambrian Period strata where we first observed the earliest development of animal life, in what we have called the fossil record, in the form of hard shells. So,as in all science, study and understanding in the geologic time scale depends upon observation and the development of evidence,
You can go to the following timelines and find many items and happenings from the Geologic Scale which point toward stories and hint of stories. Stuff that a significant number of individuals find interesting, but no stories. Will we have to make our own stories?
Go to Associated Blog Sites in left hand column of the top of this site.
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