How Do You Represent Billions of Years of Life on Our Planet?
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| 4.5 Billion Years of Earth History as a Football Field |
As a biologist one of the key concepts I like to convey to audiences is what we call Deep Time. We can talk about 300,000 million years, for example, but what does this number really mean? How can we get our heads around such vast periods of time?
This is super important because it is key to understanding the power of evolution through natural selection over the eons. Tiny changes over millions of years add up as species adapt to changing climates, geographic isolation, new predators, loss of food resources, etc.
One of the best depictions of Deep Time that I've run across is the metaphor of a football field to represent the full 4.5 Billion Years of Earth history. In my presentations, I use an excellent video that I've discovered.
You can see this 4 minute video on my website.
All the best from the Indian Ocean, one day from Port Louis on the island of Mauritius.
George
