Geologic Timescale Quotes

Little by little, over more than two centuries, the local stories told by rocks in all parts of the world have been stitched together into a great global tapestry - the geologic timescale. This "map" of Deep Time represents one of the great intellectual achievements of humanity, arduously constructed by stratigraphers, paleontologists, geochemists, and geochronologists from many cultures and faiths. It is still a work in progress to which details are constantly being added and finer and finer calibrations being made. ~ Marcia Bjornerud

The charge that the construction of the geologic scale involves circularity has a certain amount of validity ... Thus, the procedure is far from ideal and the geologic ranges are constantly being revised (usually extended) as new occurrences are found. ~ David M. Raup

What's important is that we do this in the right timescale to get the right deal for the U.K. We shouldn't invoke Article 50 immediately. ~ Theresa May

There is a relative order to the fossilized species of plants found in the geologic record for which Flood Geology cannot account, unless you can imagine apple and orange trees with Nike sneakers on their roots, racing past the magnolias and primitive mammals, leaving the ginkgoes back there with the dinosaurs when the Flood waters began to rise. ~ Frank Zindler

Growth, growth, growth
that's all we've known ... World automobile production is doubling every 10 years; human population growth is like nothing that has happened in all of geologic history. The world will only tolerate so many doublings of anything
whether it's power plants or grasshoppers. ~ M. King Hubbert

Experiments in geology are far more difficult than in physics and chemistry because of the greater size of the objects, commonly outside our laboratories, up to the earth itself, and also because of the fact that the geologic time scale exceeds the human time scale by a million and more times. This difference in time allows only direct observations of the actual geologic processes, the mind having to imagine what could possibly have happened in the past. ~ Reinout Willem Van Bemmelen

We are our own asteroid. Our consumption of fossil fuels has released--is releasing--a store of carbon into the atmosphere that has been accumulating for hundreds of millions of years. Corals, plankton, predators: everything in the ocean is screaming at us to stop. If we don't listen and take action right now, we could be witnesses to the death of most life on earth. We will be the cause of that death... We will have erased ourselves in a blink of geologic time. ~ Rob Stewart

I can only tell where I feel most at home, which is in the erosional landscape of the red rock desert of southern Utah, where the Colorado River cuts through sandstone and the geologic history of the Earth is exposed: our home in Castle Valley. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

What we initially conceived as a fairly simple geologic experiment on Mars ultimately turned into humanity's first real overland expedition across another planet. Spirit explored just as we would have, seeing a distant hill, climbing it, and showing us the vista from the summit. And she did it in a way that allowed everyone on Earth to be part of the adventure. ~ Steve Squyres

9Among the many lessons that merge from the geologic record, perhaps the most sobering is that in life, as in mutual funds, past performance is no guarantee of future results. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

The cave was cool and silent- thoroughly carpeted- with the most luxuriant mantle of mosses Alma Whittaker had ever seen.
The cave was not merely mossy; it throbbed with moss. It was not merely green; it was frantically green. It was so bright in its verdure that the color nearly spoke, as though- smashing through the world of sight- it wanted to migrate into the world of sound. The moss was a thick, living pelt, transforming every rock surface into a mythical, sleeping beast. Improbably, the deepest corners of the cave glittered the brightest; they were absolutely studded, Alma realized with a gasp, with the jewellike filigree of 'Schistotega pennata.'
Goblin's gold, dragon's gold, elfin gold- 'Schistotega pennata' was that rarest of cave mosses, that false gem that gleams like a cat's eye from within the permanent twilight of geologic shade, that unearthly sparkling plant that needs but the briefest sliver of light each day to sparkle like glory forever, that brilliant trickster whose shining facets have fooled so many travelers over the centuries into believing that they have stumbled upon hidden treasure. But to Alma, this 'was' treasure, more stunning than actual riches, for it bedecked the entire cave in the uncanny, glistering, emerald light that she had only ever before seen in miniature, in glimpses of moss seen through a microscope... yet now she was standing fully within it. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Exploratory wells located invariably by a set of deterministic seismic interpretations are drilled into reservoirs under uncertainty that is invariably poorly quantified, the geologic models yawning to be optimized by a mindset that is educated in a data-driven methodology. ~ Keith Holdaway

The geologic cycle is a bunch of balarky. ~ Arthur C. Howard

In general, we imagine rivers to be subject to a kind of dynamic equilibrium, largely stable geologic features, with processes like regional incision or subtle shifts in mountain building causing short- and medium-term variation around some slowly changing mean condition, but in fact it is far more common to see dramatic change over short periods, with long periods of stability between in what geologists refer to as 'dynamic metastable equilibrium.'
It is the same with families, memory, the history of a person's life, what we believe to be true. ~ Katharine Haake

The largest mistake would be to start to move away from petroleum, a proven and economic energy source, to more speculative and expensive sources ... The world will eventually leave the age of oil, but there is no geologic reason for this to happen until near the end of the 21st century. ~ David Deming

Every milestone in the history of the company, even when forecast with heaps of hoopla, was ultimately played out according to some secret timeline of geologic tedium, so that it was drained of all interest and drama well before it took place and afterward went all but unnoticed. ~ Thomas Ligotti

Dinosaurs are the best way to teach kids, and adults, the immensity of geologic time. ~ Robert T. Bakker

Men are so charmed with valor that they have pleased themselves with being called lions, leopards, eagles and dragons, from the animals contemporary with us in the geologic formations. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Transfixed by the bright gaze of a lizard, I become calm. This stone on which the lizard lies was under the sea when lizards first came into being, and now the flood is wearing it away, to return it once again into the oceans. ~ Peter Matthiessen

Not only the iron on Earth, but also the iron in the entire Solar
System, comes from outer space, since the temperature in the Sun is
inadequate for the formation of iron. The Sun has a surface temperature
of 6,000 degrees Celsius (11,000oF), and a core temperature of approximately
20 million degrees (36 million degrees Fahrenheit). Iron can
only be produced in much larger stars than the Sun, where the temperature
reaches a few hundred million degrees. When the amount of iron
exceeds a certain level in a star, the star can no longer accommodate it,
and it eventually explodes in what is called a "nova" or a "supernova."
These explosions make it possible for iron to be given off into space.40
One scientific source provides the following information on this
subject:
There is also evidence for older supernova events: Enhanced levels of
iron-60 in deep-sea sediments have been interpreted as indications that a
supernova explosion occurred within 90 light-years of the sun about 5
million years ago. Iron-60 is a radioactive isotope of iron, formed in
Allah's Miracles in the Qur'an
85
supernova explosions, which decays with a half life of 1.5 million years.
An enhanced presence of this isotope in a geologic layer indicates the
recent nucleosynthesis of elements nearby in space and their subsequent
transport to the earth (perhaps as part of dust grains).41
All this shows that i ~ Harun Yahya

I have had a lifelong association with these things. (Odd that the word 'trees' does not apply.) I can accept them and their power and their age because I was early exposed to them. ON the other hand, people lacking such experience begin to have a feeling of uneasiness here, of danger, of being shut in, enclosed and overwhelmed. It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left--a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it? p. 172 Travels with Charley ~ John Steinbeck

As a geologist, I love Earth observations, but it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a 'consensus' that humans are causing global warming when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. 'Consensus,' as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science. You know as well as I, the 'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. ~ Harrison Schmitt

The rocks are not so close akin to us as the soil; they are one more remove from us; but they lie back of all, and are the final source of all ... Time, geologic time, looks out at us from the rocks as from no other objects in the landscape. ~ John Burroughs

background extinction." In ordinary times - times here understood to mean whole geologic epochs - extinction takes place only very rarely, more rarely even than speciation, and it occurs at what's known as the background extinction rate. This rate varies from one group of organisms to another; often it's expressed in terms of extinctions per million species-years. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

It is not only the size of these redwoods but their strangeness that frightens them. And why not? For these are the last remaining members of a race that flourished over four continents as far back in geologic time as the upper Jurassic period. Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left
a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it? And could there be a strong resistance to the certainty that a living world will continue its stately way when we no longer inhabit it? ~ John Steinbeck

The geologic column is a bunch of balarky. ~ Arthur C. Howard

By burning through coal and oil deposits, humans are putting carbon back into the air that has been sequestered for tens - in most cases hundreds - of millions of years. In the process, we are running geologic history not only in reverse but at warp speed. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

All geologic history is full of the beginning and the ends of species-of their first and last days; but it exhibits no genealogies of development. ~ Hugh Miller

Our planet is not fragile at its own timescale and we, pitiful latecomers in the last microsecond of our planetary year, are stewards of nothing in the long run. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

The evidence that climate change is happening is completely unequivocal ... The later governments leave tackling climate change, the harder it will be to combat ... The variation we are seeing in temperature or rainfall is double the rate of the average. That suggests that we are going to have more droughts, we are going to have more floods, we are going to have more sea surges and we are going to have more storms. These are the sort of changes that are going to affect us in quite a short timescale ~ John Beddington

I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode. ~ Maya Lin

[The] subjective [historical] element in geologic studies accounts for two characteristic types that can be distinguished among geologists: one considering geology as a creative art, the other regarding geology as an exact science. ~ Reinout Willem Van Bemmelen

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period. ~ Mark Twain

Although it is tempting to think of these natural landscapes as reflecting a stability in climactic and geologic forces, long periods of climactic and geophysical stability actually result in a rundown of the energy available to ecosystems and people. Geologically young regions with recent mountain building and volcanism tend to be much more biologically productive and have supported large populations of people despite their vulnerability to natural disasters. Geologically old regions (like most of Australia) tend to have low biological productivity and supported fewer people. ~ David Holmgren

The conquest of the outskirts of the atmosphere, and eventually space, is a revolutionary event, comparable only to the transition of the aquatic animals to the land in geologic times. ~ Hubertus Strughold

All the things that we've done as a species have had a limited scope. We're talking about melting the ice caps, raising the level of the seas dramatically, changing the distribution of every other species on Earth, perhaps wiping out one-third or half of them. The changes at work are geologic in scale. The level of change required to deal with it is enormous, too. It will require change in every country. It will require a degree of global cooperation that we haven't seen before. ~ Bill McKibben

One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice. ~ Robert Morgan

connoisseurs of geologic form, ~ Jon Krakauer

We'll set our approach to borrowing, to spending, to taxation, in a sensible way on a sensible timescale. ~ Douglas Alexander

Various epochs of the past have had their own characteristic struggles and interests. Each of these great epochs has left behind itself a kind of cultural deposit, like a geologic stratum. These deposits have found their way into educational institutions in the form of studies, distinct courses of study, distinct types of schools. ~ John Dewey

The main reason for insisting on the universal Flood as a fact of history and as the primary vehicle for geological interpretation is that God's Word plainly teaches it! No geologic difficulties, real or imagined, can be allowed to take precedence over the clear statements and necessary inferences of Scripture. ~ Henry M. Morris

The Galapagos Islands provide a window on time. In a geologic sense, the islands are young, yet they appear ancient. ~ Frans Lanting

For four years he lived in Brooklyn, and four years in Brooklyn are a geologic age
a single stratum of grey time. They were years of poverty, of desperation, of loneliness unutterable. All about him were the poor, the outcast, the neglected and forsaken people of America, and he was one of them. But life is strong, and year after year it went on around him in all its manifold complexity, rich with its unnoticed and unrecorded little happenings. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Useful mnemonic for remembering the geologic periods of the last half-billion years is: Camels Often Sit Down Carefully, Perhaps Their Joints Creak (Cambrian-Ordovician-Silurian-Devonian-Carboniferous-Permian-Triassic-Jurassic-Cretaceous). The mnemonic unfortunately runs out before the most recent periods: the Paleogene, the Neogene, and the current Quaternary. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

Push up some mountains. Cut them down. Drown the land under the sea. Push up some more mountains. Cut them down. Push up a third set of mountains, and let the river cut through them. "Unconformity" is the geologic term for an old, eroded land surface buried under younger rock layers. Put your outspread hand over the Carlin Canyon, Nevada unconformity and your fingers span roughly forty million years- the time that it took to bevel down the first set of mountains and deposit the younger layers on top. What is forty million years? Enough time for a small predatory dinosaur to evolve into a bird. Enough time for a four-legged, deer-like mammal to evolve into a whale. And far more than enough time to turn an ape-like creature in eastern Africa into a big-brained biped who can marvel at such things. The Grand Canyon's Great Unconformity divides 1.7 billion-year-old rock from 550 million-year-old rock, a gap of more than one billion years. One billion years. I earn my salary studying the Earth and teaching its history, but I admit utter helplessness in comprehending such a span. A billion pages like those of this book would stack up more than forty miles. I had lived one bullion seconds a few days before my thirty-second birthday. A tape measure one billion inches long would stretch two-thirds of the way around the Earth. Such analogies hint at what deep time means- but they don't get us there. "The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time," John Mc ~ Keith Meldahl

Nature is a book of many pages and each page tells a fascinating story to him who learns her language. Our fertile valleys and craggy mountains recite an epic poem of geologic conflicts. The starry sky reveal gigantic suns and space and time without end. ~ A. E. Douglass