Bang Bang Bang on the Door, Baby? The Big Bang, Pop, Bloop, Plop, Fizz, or the Incredible Creation? The Big Inning? The Big Baseball Game Begins? The Big Babe, as in Babe Ruth Hit the Baby Out of the Park, or Your Mother Was a Babe Until She Had Us? The Original Miracle Mets? Pop-N-Fresh, oh that flaky, buttery melt-in-your-mouth taste? It didn't begin with a whimper, it will end with one?
-??? Big Bang or Creation, Only Jehovah's Hairdresser Knows for Sure? Is there nothing sacred? Call it what you will, but it sounds dirty, Big Bang, Big Blowout, Big Bubble, Big Con Game, Super Seed, Grand Expansion, Spacetime Zero, Mother of Matter, Big Boot, Sysgen-Alpha, What Happens If I Press This Button?, Primal Ummph, Wild Thing You Make My Heart Sing, God Wad, Godwannaland, Coyote Ugly (Universe-God-Life-You)? Maybe scientists should call it the Big Something Wonderful? The Fake/Phony/Faux Creation? Why not just go un-PC, call it Genesis, admit we can never know because we can't look back in Time, and give it some respect, or has that Genesis story in the Bible got to ya and you gotta play god yourself?
First, the philosophy section. Did the Universe and life arise spontaneously, or were they created by an intelligent Creator? Is it all just Matter-Energy, Time, and Chance, nothing but soul-free eternal material energy shaped by pure chance, and silent about ultimate values, or just the opposite, the unfolding of the Creator's master plan, complete with written commandments from God? What is Time, Space, Matter-Energy, Spacetime? Why is there an Arrow of Time? Who or What or Is There a Master of Time without being limited by Space? Who created the Creator or Prime Mover? Who created the Itsy Bitsy Thang that Just Went Bang? Everything came from Everything-in-a-Box, and Space-Time came from Jack in the Box? How long did the Big Babe just sit there before it had its Big Baby? A jillion googleyahren? Do philosophical naturalists have any evidence that anything in the Universe is natural and not a marvel of design? Did we really arrive so late? Then why the giant leap from the sterile part of the Universe to the living part? Why the second giant leap from all animal and vegetable life to sapient man? Is the Universe naturally sterile, and life a priceless gift of God, and the Earth a paradise spaceship created and designed as the eternal home of the only life anywhere, and we're risking God's wrath by choosing to ignore that, or is life cheap, arising spontaneously in all the galaxies, with no need for gods, and our space buddies are out there waiting for us to build warp drives and join the Space Federation and sidle up to the Space Cantina bar and talk about selling the planet for scrap? Then why has no proof of intelligent ET life been found? Why does the Earth seem such a lucky plucker, with such a shocking plethora of coincidences just happening to stack up in its favor so that we can bring you this here Great Track of Time? And where are all them space aliens, are we considered cosmic stinkers and they don't wanna touch us, or are there some good reasons we're still not making contact and what will it cost the taxpayers?
Why do we need a cold pizza? Did life emerge from primal ooze? Are humans descended from the same ancestor as chimps? Genetically engineered by Aliens? Is man sexistly made in the image of a male God like it says in The Bible Book of Genesis? Did God exist for aeons of time, creating Jesus as his master worker in the creation of all other things? (Proverbs 8:22-31) Or did man create God and make-up Jesus, and they're just fairy tales that should be laid back in the toy box? Is the Universe billions, trillions, quadrillions, or zillions of yaren old? Or is it young, and created in six days of so-many thousands of years each in an initial state that godless fool scientists won't accept, and allowed to unfold in a Perfect Plan which is now in Perfect Day Seven, or were the six days of Creation just normal days and the number 23 is the answer to life, the Universe and everything? Is man becoming bored with God, or is the Universe bored with man? Stay tuned, as Time itself rolls towards the answer? - but the box just says it's made with five whole grains, and that's good, isn't it?
But first some colorful trivia? We enter the realm of pseudo-scientific reconstruction of history, where just perhaps it's all an illusion created by a deceiver in our minds, but the High Priesthood of Professional Scientists insists that Nature and its rocks and stars are an open book with neatly-spaced bookmarks of Deep Geological Time, and all they have to do is hunker down and dig, then assign dates on the Great Track of Pre-Human Time, or look up and out with a bigger better telescope and peep, or even better, combine the two in a space-borne telescope, and with a little calculation and the application of scientific principles the high priests can see back in Time and construct a Cosmic Historyscope or Cosmoscope (Cosmic Ouija Board?) and then tell us what The Gob means just when girl I'm over you, you were my only hope and shining star, rock steady, inescapable, it will find you out? Here's the new Bible, from I Pottery, II Shards and Rubble, III Bottomy, IV Dumb Rocks, to V Used Stars Sales. Or is the Bible the Truth straight from the One Guy Who Knows, and dinosaurs were created at the same time as humans, and ate out of our hands?
To give Jehovah his equal time:
"1 In the beginning God created the Heaven(s) and the Earth. 2 And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. 6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. 9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, Let the Earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the Earth: and it was so. 12 And the Earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day. 14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the Earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the Earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. 20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the Earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the Earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. 24 And God said, Let the Earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the Earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the Earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the Earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the Earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the Earth. 29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the Earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the Earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the Earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. 31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Chapter 2. 1 Thus the heavens and the Earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." - Genesis Chapters 1-2.
"Where were you when I founded the Earth... who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?... Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place, that it might take hold of the skirts of the Earth, and the wicked to be shaken out of it?" - Job 38:4-13.
"The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all." - Psalms 103:19.
"Praise him, Sun and Moon, praise him, all you shining stars... For he commanded and they were created, and he established them for ever and ever; he fixed their bounds which cannot be passed." - Psalms 148:3-6.
"God is a God, not of confusion and disorder, but of peace." - 1 Corinthians 14:33.
"Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe... For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." - 1 Corinthians 1:20-25.
"Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty. For all that is in the heavens and in the Earth is thine. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all." - 1 Chronicles 29:11.
"He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end." - Ecclesiastes 3:11
"You cannot partake of the cup of Jehovah and the cup of demons." - 1 Corinthians 10:21.
"The whole world is lying in the power of the evil one." - 1 John 5:19.
"As I looked, thrones were placed, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His raiment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool. His throne was fiery flames, its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and came forth from before him. A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court sat in judgment, and the books were opened." - Daniel 7:9-10.
-infinity
According to South African physicist Neil Geoffrey Turok (1958-) of Cambridge U. and Paul Joseph Steinhardt (1952-) of Princeton U. in 2001, the Current Universe was created by the cyclical trillion-year collision of two Universes that were attracted toward each other by the leaking of gravity out of one of them; the past is filled with endlessly repeating cycles of evolution of new Universes, and we're just lucky to be in this one?; instead of a Big Bang, there is a Big Bounce?
According to the Mayan, er, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology of English physicist Sir Roger Penrose (1931-) of Oxford U. and Armenian physicist Vahagn "Vahe" Gurzadyan (1955-), there was no theoretical beginning to the Universe because it iterates through infinite cycles, with each iteration becoming the Big Bang singularity of the next.
-13,800,000,000 (13.799 +/- 0.021 billion years) The Hot Big Bang (a hole that is too too too to be black or white?) don't ask but just happens, the Universe starting with a singularity the size of a marble (smaller than the size of an atom?) and expanding trillions of trillions of times almost instantly, creating space, time, matter and energy, according to data from the Hubble Telescope as interpreted by astronomers; all kinds of Big Stuff happens right afterwards, with a Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) of free quarks and gluons filling all of spacetime for the first 10 microsec., after which the U expands to the size of a soccer ball in the first 10-33 sec., and the temperature cools to 100 quadrillion trillion deg. at 10,243 sec., with graavity evolving, after which the temperature cools to 1 billion billion billion deg. at 20,477 sec., with matter emerging in the form of quarks and electrons, along with antimatter; at 30,687 sec. the electroweak force splits into the electromagnetic and weak forces; at 31,712 sec. the temperature cools to 1T deg., allowing the quarks to form protons and neutrons, while the antiquarks form antiprotons, which collide with protons, causing photons (light) to emerge; at 31,713 sec. the electrons collide with positrons, wiping out most of the latter; at 31,773 sec. the temperature cools to 1B deg., allowing neutrons and protons to combine to form light ions incl. heavy hydrogen, helium and lithium; the cosmos then expands to 100B mi. diam. then cools to 3K deg. at 300K years (temp. of the surface of the Sun), allowing the formation of the first atoms; the U then gives out a last burst of light at 380K years, AKA Original Dawn's Early Light, which forms the Cup of Demons, AKA Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), which survives to modern times, allowing the Universe's "baby picture" to be taken, then goes dark at T plus 400K years, beginning the Cosmological (Cosmic) Dark Ages (my favorite time of day?); the Universe really has no beginning when quantum theory is correctly applied?; "We have a photo album of the Universe incl. baby pictures, but we're missing some pages" (Avi Loeb) - some, like I'm like Saddam Hussein, don't count on the verification? The CMBR (Wilkinson) map incl. the Axis of Evil, a cold region. Did the Big Bang require a higher intelligence to precisely plan the Cosmological Constant? Is the Universe part of a Multiverse? Do the Large-Scale Structures in the Universe disprove a Big Bang? Is the Universe's diameter currently 156B l.y., or 250 x 90 l.y.? Do at least thirteen Great Walls of 100M parsec-long rivers of galaxies spaced 600M ly. apart stretching 7B l.y. require the Universe to be 150B years old to form? Did the Universe come from a wormhole in another Universe, as suggested in 2010 by Polish-born Am. physicist Nikodem Janusz Poplawski (1975-) of Indiana U.? Does Dark Energy imply not a Big Bang but a Big Ongoing?
How did Science end up seriously believing that everything come out of nothing in the middle of nowhere in nospace? Who or what made the marble, that unstable marble that couldn't keep its shit together and blew? Does the marble get no respect? I'd like to be able to create, er, a marble like that? Is this marble like the theologians' old pie in the sky, incapable of scientific proof by definition, because nobody could have been there to observe it? Da Marble, it's all about Da Marble? What a Marble? Why don't scientists worship the Marble, their Mother, the Mother of All? Duh, now I get it? Is the Universe an aggie, a cat's eye, a mica, a sulphid, a clearie, a puree, or a commie? Maybe it was two marbles that collided in some Big Boy's pocket on the Great Turtle's back? Since everything is just a big accident, well, whadya say, why be square? These things here, they are called the hands of the clock, and your time is running out, so do it now, conform, we will conform? Rescue me from Camp Dragon, brave boy, I'm no match for the armor of God? Has the illusion that Science has a Cosmoscope that can look back into Time by examining the present and running too-complicated-for-non-scientists math equations backward for giant periods in the face of the gigantic uncertainties at the quantum level (which concedes that anything is possible at any time) proved to be bankrupt and has to be put back in the mason jar? We got to stop this train, but how? Wait a minute? Is the Big Bang a fact or just another fairy tale, and if so, where is that album, why should we trust it? How can the Big U be just a fact? You think you have control, but you don't, because I have the remote? Is it only a temporary mental problem of a generation of godless scientists hijacking Science who seek to impose their no-God philosophies on society so they can be carefree lechers like Bertrand Russell? Guess who I plan to be, can you guess, Pinocchio? Tell a truth, tell a lie, tell a truth, tell a lie? Or does the very idea that This Thing We Call the Big U Comes From a Marble presuppose a a a Holy Marble, created by an incomprehensibly intelligent and heavy duty Creator that is above this concept we created beings call Time, and this is God's will for you, in Christ, er, yah? But then, Gobs of Eons beat God, squeeze him into a tiny box with no room inside, like a marble? Who's squeezing who? Like the Bible says, play Do Not Conform by renewing your mind? Duh, the gobs of eons during which the Exploding Marble U was obviously a dull place for Jack would contradict the omnipotence of the Creator, who should have had no problemo calling Marb-All into existence already exploded, and exploded his way, down to the quantum level, before he set the Clock of Time ticking? Hence the real problemo boils down to whether the Big U is billions of years old in the first place, and how can we know, no, let's do it, get ready to hit the switch, the real question is whether there is a Creator and who is all wet? Maybe next year the godless scientists will go back to proclaiming that the Big U is actually eternal, and Time fathomless, like they used to, and that it's us humans who first rose out of the primeval chaos to create order, like the gods on Mount Olympus, er, Prometheus, you're an electrical genius, wanna be a god, no thanks? Oh yes, that one's not PC, since it is too obviously a return to paganism, which at this late date (considering, er, history?) has to be non-obvious, and worse, it robs Science of its Cosmoscope, and the Priesthood of Scientists of its Throne to Rule the Godless Manimals From? At least it's nice to know that if everything is part of Mamma Marbe, we would have had to have been there from the get-go, as equals, our matter-energy at least, hence we must be becoming as gods after all, yes it looks like a mouse, it's a perpetual motion machine, it runs without gas on its own? But when it all started we were a mess, no brains, hence how many minutes are in an hour my bedbug friends, sixty? Science needs an attorney to file Chapter Something, hey, you better not lie to me again, lying is never cool, it's a crime and you have to ask for forgiveness, and BTW, the divine artist's studio needs to have its NEA funding renewed? Back to the library? What was that about suffer the little children? Shut up, marble-poop? Back to the POS part of the GTT?
-13,600,000,000 After dark matter draws in hydrogen and helium, the Cosmic Dawn begins, forming the earliest stars, 25-100x as massive as the Sun and 1Mx brighter, with a mere 1M-year lifespan - talk about life being cheap?
-13,500,000,000 After hot stars and black holes begin clearing out the cosmic fog of hydrogen, the first baby galaxies begin to shine, containing up to 1M 2nd-generation Sun-sized stars, then begin gradually colliding and merging to form bigger galaxies.
-13,000,000,000 The Epoch of Reonization sees the hydrogen gas left over from the Big Bang get ionized by radiation from the first stars. The Himiko Cloud (Lyman-alpha Blob) H-He protogalaxy becomes the most massive object discovered so far in the Universe.
-12,700,000,000 For its first 1B years the Universe remains in a fog, forming the earliest stars; the elements of life, carbon and oxygen, don't form yet? The first galaxies form within the first 1B years, but are much smaller than the Milky Way?
-12,500,000,000 The most opaque place in the Universe contains relatively little matter because the gas in deep space is not only highly opaque to UV light but its transparency varies widely from place to place. Reionization of the Universe is caused by light from young stars in the first galaxies, leaving large neutral islands of cold gas?
-12,200,000,000 The Wolfe Disk (Disc) (Galaxy) (DLA0817g) in the constellation Cancer 12.276B l-y. from Earth becomes the earliest and most distant known galaxy.
The Universal Warming Era begins (ends -11.3B), when electrons are stripped from helium atoms, heating intergalactic gas and keeping it from gravitional collapse to form new generations of stars in small galaxies, fierce blasts of radiation from voracious black holes stunting their growth for 500M years. The first Milky Way-sized galaxies appear?
-11,500,000,000 The first galaxies with mature shapes appear?
-11,000,000,000 A dramatic surge in star birth occurs.
-10,600,000,000 The ape Danuvius guggenmosi walks upright?
-10,000,000,000 After a heck of a lot of lucky things happen, about 70 sextillion (70 x 10**21) stars are formed (10x the number of grains of sand on all the beaches and deserts on Earth), incl. the 100K-l.y.-diam. Milky Way Galaxy - raw or pasteurized and homogenized?
Reverse extrapolation of genetic complexity suggests that life originated about this time, before the Earth was born, according to a 2013 paper by Alexei A. Sharov and Richard Gordon titled Life Before Earth.
-8,000,000,000 The Guardian of Forever is created (Star Trek) :)
-7,000,000,000 Large galaxies stop growing?
-6,000,000,000 After the expansion caused by the Big Bang that is being slowed by gravitation, it suddenly speeds up again, caused by Dark Energy.
-4,567,000,000 The Sun (Sol) is formed from the Solar Nebula, which contracts due to shock waves from a nearby supernova, collapses into a rotating disk concentrated in a protosun, and surrounded by planetesimals and meteoroids; fusion begins, igniting the Sun, followed by 1M years of violent solar activity, sweeping out the lighter materials with solar wind; it ends up in the midplane in a region of low dust distinction between the Sagittarius and Perseus Arms in the Galactic Habitable (Goldilocks) Zone?
-4,600,000,000 The Cryptic Era begins; the Solar System, incl. the Earth (-4.54B?) and solar planets is formed from the Sun's accretion disk anywhere from 10M to 100M after the Sun begins nuking; that is, if it's really that old. The Earth and Moon are created from the Big Splat (Theia Impact) between two planets, Theia (the size of Mars) and ? (the size of Venus) 30M-150M years after the formation of the Solar System?; 70%-90% of the Moon's matrial comes from Theia; the Moon is created when a Mars-sized object crashes into Earth, probably a sister planet?; the pro-Earth formed in only 5M years from random collisions between larger and larger planetary bodies?; the Moon is created after Earth turns into a vaporized rock synestia?; the Moon is created by a nuclear explosion on Earth?; massive impactors during the final phase of formation of the Earth, Moon, and Mars deliver highly siderophile (metal-loving) elements incl. gold and platinum?; the oceans formed 11M after the Solar System? Jupiter is formed near the "snow line" (4 AU), acting as a meteor and comet magnet, protecting the Privileged Plant Earth, which is 25K mi. in dia., and which light can only circle 7x/sec. Bible fundamentalists claim that the Earth is only 6K or 40K years old, based on counting the genealogies back to Adam, plus some hand-waving arguments about "days of creation". In a curious mixed metaphor, scientists call the initial phase of the lifeless Earth the Hadean Eon, a swirling ball of molten metal and rock with a giant vapor cloud instead of oceans; it takes 700M-800M years to cool enough for water to condense from a Venus-like atmosphere?
-4,565,560,000 Erg Chech 2002 lands in the Sahara Desert in modern-day S Algeria, becoming the oldest volcanic rock known.
-4,510,000,000 Only 50M (20M-100M?) years after the Earth is formed, it gets into the Big Whack (Splat) (Theia Impact), an impact with the Mars-sized planet Theia (named after the mother of Selene, goddesss of the Moon) producing zillions of moonlets, which coalesce by -4.51B to -4.37B to form the Moon, which ever-so luckily stabilizes Earth's axis of rotation so that life can exist; Mercury loses much of its mantle, and the direction of Venus' rotation reverses; both the Earth and the Moon develop a core, mantle, and surface crust layer.
-4,500,000,000 After chemical reactions involving iron in the magma oceans, the young Earth's mantle becomes richer in oxygen and begins emitting CO2 and H2O into the oxygen-poor atmosphere. The Last Universal Common Ancestor of all cellular life forms on Earth arises, from which 1B years later emerge the eubacteria and archaebacteria; eukaryotes arise from the eubacteria.
-4,404,000,000 Simon Wilde of Curtin U. of Tech. in Perth finds high oxygen isotope ratios in 200-micron zircon crystals (tetragonal ZrSiO4) of this age found in the Jack Hills in the Narryer Gneiss Terrane, Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia, indicating a low-temp. surface and a continental-type crust, suggesting that Earth has oceans and continents 50M after the Big Whack?
-4,400,000,000 The Purple Rain (from the zircons that form) of comets and/or asteroids greater than 100 km in dia. begins on Earth and the Moon (ends -3.9B); the mares are formed on the Moon, creating the plains of solidified lava forming the Man in the Moon; each impact on Earth vaporizes the oceans and conveniently sterilizes any existing life (incl. the gods on Mount Olympus?) while reforming the Earth's surface, furnishing it with most of its life-essential elements incl. carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur; the intense heat creates an underground habitat where single cell "unboilable bacteria" thrive, according to Oleg Abramov et al. of the U. of Colo. in 2009. Between comets, does Earth actually get cool enough (100 C) for liquid water to form? The Four Legos of Life, the first primordial peptides are formed?
-4,360,000,000 The Moon is formed at this time, not 200M years earlier?
-4,300,000,000 Earth has liquid water?
-4,200,000,000 Earth's magnetic field forms, according to John Tarduno of the U. of Rochester in 2015.
-4,150,000,000 The Basin-Groups 1-9 Period of the Hadean Eon begins (ends -3.95B).
-4,100,000,000 The Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) of asteroids on Earth, Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars begins (ends -3.8B).
-4,060,000,000 The 500M-year (80%-90% of geological time) Precambrian Era, the Priscoan Phase of the Precambrian Eon begins (ends -4.03B); the whole thing is called the Precambrian Time; it should also be called the Chaotian Aeon? The oldest meteorites found on Earth are of this age? Here's your pizza, with free warm brownies, too good to be true, oh fudgems, or, When God was designing the Big Pool Table of the Solar System, he made Earth the 8-ball in the side pocket? Regardless of how it got here, there it is? Earth: diameter 8K mi., circumference (pi times diameter) 25K mi. (about one time zone every 1K mi. of longitude), surface area (pi times diameter squared) 197M sq. mi. (12.6B acres), land area (29%) 57.5M sq. mi., water area (71%) 139.5M sq. mi., containing 326M cu mi. of water (1 cu. mi. = 1T gal.); 97% of the water is in salty oceans, 2% is in glaciers and icecaps, and 1% is freshwater, most of it underground; the Seven Continents (Lat. "to contain"): if all were the same size, each would be about 8M sq. mi.; too bad, some get more and some get less: Asia (17.2M) (30%), Africa (11.6M) (20.2%), North Am. (9.4M) (16.5%), South Am. (6.9M) (12%), Antarctica (on the side of the globe opposite Arctos the Great Bear) (5.1M) (8.9%), Europe (3.8M) (6.7%), Australia (Down Under) (2.9M) (3.1M with nearby islands) (5.3%) - so God gave the yellows the most territory, then the blacks, then the reds and browns, then the penguins and seals, leaving the second smallest to the whites, tempting them to forever steal territory from the others as they breed, and come face to face with the divine problem of I-made-them-all racemixing? Okay, if you include all of Russia in Europe, it jumps to 8.8M, while Asia reduces to 11.9M. Highest points in each continent: Asia: Everest, 29,017 ft.; South America: Aconcagua, 22,834 ft.; North America: McKinley, 20,320 ft.; Africa: Kilimanjaro, 19,340 ft.; Antarctica: Vinson Massif, 16,863 ft.; highest point on Earth: Mt. Chamborozo in Bolivia, which is 1.5 mi. higher than Everest because of the spherical oblateness of the Earth (prime meridian is 52 mi. shorter than equator). Major Oceans (sq. mi.): Pacific Ocean (64M), Atlantic Ocean (31.5M), Indian Ocean (28.4M), Southern Ocean (7.8M), Arctic Ocean (5.5M); major seas: Mediterranean Sea (1.15M), South China Sea (895K), Bering Sea (878K), Caribbean Sea (750K), Gulf of Mexico (700K), Sea of Okhotsk (582K), East China Sea (480K), Yellow Sea (580K), Hudson Bay (472K), Sea of Japan (405K), North Sea (221K), Red Sea (178K), Black Sea (168K), Baltic Sea (158K); the Pacific contains 25K islands covering 1.2M sq. mi; avg. world ocean depth is 12.46K ft.; avg. continental height is 2.75K ft above sea level; the deepest part of the oceans is the Mariana (Marianas) Trench (6.8 mi.) near Guam; the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean is Milwaukee Deep (28,232 ft.), 80 mi. N of Puerto Rico (discovered in 1939). Hellas Planitia on Mars contains a large sea? (-4.5B to -3.5B) North Am. is 8K mi. long N-S, while Eurasia is 8K mi. long E-W, giving the latter an advantage with the ease of spread of animals, people, and technology, which combined with the greater success at domestication of animals, which also give them many fatal diseases that they can bring with them allows the Euros to easily conquer America with their guns, germs, and steel.
-4,020,000,000 The Idiwhaa (Dogrib "ancient") felsic rocks near the Acasta River near Great Bear Lake in Canada contain tiny zircon crystals indicating that they are the only surviving remnants of an extraterrestrial barrage during the first 600M years of Earth's existence, creating Earth's oldest rocks?
-4,000,000,000 Uranus and Neptune switch places in the Solar System? - Solar System toilet humor jokes here? The Sun rotates 10x faster than today, generating a stronger magnetic field and sunspot activity, incl. several hundred times as much UV and X-ray radiation. The Faint Young Sun Paradox (70% intense as in modern times), pub. in 1972 by Am. astronomers Carl Edward Sagan (1934-96) and George Mullen tries to explain why the Earth's climate has been fairly constant for the last 4B years yet the Sun's radiation has increased by 25%-30%; in 1993 Am. scientist Jim Fraser Kasting (1953-) concludes that CO2 was 30% of the Earth's atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect; in 2010 Danish scientist Minik Rosing et al. propose that the cloud layer was thinner in the past, allowing more rays to reach the Sun, and that the CO2 levels were only 0.1%. Venus forms basalt continents and Mars forms shield volcanoes, with neither having differentiation or plate tectonics; Venus goes into a runaway greenhouse effect and loses water?; Mars loses its CO2 quickly and becomes too cold for liquid water and goes into permanent deep-freeze, whether or not it once had oceans?; Mars and Venus end up as the only two other Solar System planets with CO2 atmospheres - the soda pop planets? Eat your heart out, Ray Bradbury? The Priscoan Phase of the Precambrian Eon ends, and the Archean (Archaean) Eon (Period) (Archean Phase of the Precambrian Eon) begins (ends -2.5B) (-3.8B to -2.5B?); the walls of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River in Colo. have exposed strata from this era. As the bombardment slows, the Earth stabilizes and cools, and its surface becomes resurfaced for the last time and solidifies, the crust differentiates into the earliest felsic crust (first continents), and the initial atmosphere outgasses; a heavy rain floods the surface, forming the deep highly alkaline Archaean (Archean) (Soda) Ocean (Sea) by -3.9B, according to S. Kempe and E.T. Degens (1985), causing the thioredoxin enzymes to be developed, which are chemically stable at temps up to 58F (32C)?. The first Cratons (continental shields) form on Earth, along with andesite (low density floating platform) volcanism and granite batholiths causing plate tectonics and continental building to begin and progress rapidly, with addition of crust at margins of continents and subduction zones. Magnetofossils on Mars suggest microbial life?; microbes become the most abudant form of life on Earth until vascular plants begin to spread across the surface about -400M. The Last Common Ancestor (LCA) of all living organisms on Earth dates to this era?
-3,900,000,000 The Purple Rain reaches its maximum intensity, conveniently obliterating any traces of life that happened to evolve (the original unutterable male-female glyph?), and boiling the oceans away - we can always hope some new life is shipped in on meteors?
-3,920,000,000 The Nectarian Period of the Archean Eon begins (ends -3.85B); the Mare Nectaris Basin on the Moon is formed by large impact events. The Purple Rain comes to an end.
-3,850,000,000 The Nectarian Period (begun -3.92B) begins, and the Early (Lower) Imbrian Epoch of the Archean Eon begins (ends -3.8B); Mare Imbrium on the Moon is created. The earliest known biochemical evidence for life and for a hydrosphere; the earliest evidence for 2.5 nanometer-long DNA?
-3,800,000,000 The Late Heavy Bombardment (begun -4.1B) ends. The Early Imbrian Epoch (begun -3.85B) ends, and the Upper Imbrian Epoch of the Archean Eon begins (ends -3.2B); the lunar mantle below the basins melts and fills them with basalt; most of the maria on the modern Moon are formed. The Isuan Era of the Archean Eon begins (ends -3.5B). The first water-related sediments on Earth are found. Plate tectonics begin on lucky plucker lone gunman Earth, are essential for life to form and surivive?; the earliest known rocks on Earth are felsic (rich in feldspar and silica) gneisses collected from the Acasta Gneiss Complex in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The first seeds of life are deposited on Earth by comets that carry alien extraterrestrial microbes?
-3,770,000,000 Fossils in hydrothermal vents in the Nuvvuagittuq supracrustal belt in Quebec, Canada are the oldest known life on Earth?
-3,700,000,000 The oldest known stromatolites (stone mattresses) are found in Greenland, containing the earliest cyanobacteria microfossils (filamentous prokaryotes that produce oxygen), implying the existence of the ozone layer, or the existence of oxygen oases; in 2011 they are proved to be inorganic - funny how the same cyanobacteria still exist today?
-3,500,000,000 The Isuan Era (begun -3.8B) ends, and the Swazian Era of the Archean Eon begins (ends -2.8B); the oldest known oceanic crust is formed. Earth's strong magnetic field begins to decrease as the core nucleates (ends -2.8B). The earliest known fossil cells are from complex mat-forming microbial communities in the Dresser Formation in Pilbara, Western Australia that leave Microbially Induced Sedimentary Structures (MISS). The Big Bang of Life occurs as two different prokaryote genomes fuse into a eukaryote genome in yeast within the next 2B years? Thanks to meteorites, the Earth is abundant in phosphorus.
-3,450,000,000 Earth's magnetic field forms?
-3,430,000,000 Strelley Pool Formation in W Australia contains the earliest known microfossils.
-3,400,000,000 The first photosynthetic bacteria appear on Earth, absorbing near-infrared rather than visible light and producing sulfurous compounds; their pigments are predecessors to chlorophyll. The oldest fossilized single-cell organisms date to this era; they are anerobic bacteria. A giant asteroid as large as R.I. collides with Earth, creating a 500km crater along with giant tsunamis that create the Barberton Greenstone Belt in South Africa.
-3,300,000,000 The oldest known stone tools are discovered on the W shores of lake Turkana in the Rift Valley of Kenya; made by flat-faced ape-like hominin Kenyanthropus platyops?
-3,200,000,000 The Upper Imbrian Epoch (begun -3.8B) ends, and the Eratosthenian Period of the Archean Eon begins (ends -1.1B); the lunar crater Eratosthenes is formed at the start, and the crater Copernicus at the end. The Earth has a global ocean (waterworld)? The Earth has its first tides, and the lunar month is only 20 days, while the Earth year is 550 days.
-3,000,000,000 Antarctica (Gk. "opposite the [Great] Bear") is formed. The hypothetical Genomic Fossil suddenly inflates, introducing modern electron transport into life and leading to the Cambrian Explosion? Plankton fossils are found in Farrel Quartzite from Western Australia dating to this time.
-2,800,000,000 The Swazian Era ends, and the Randian Era of the Hadean Eon begins in South Africa (ends -2.45B), when life gets randy and cyanobacteria begin photosynthesis using visible light, which releases CO2 into the atmosphere. The Earth's magnetic field stops its decline. Metallic spheres are found near Klerksdorp, South Africa that some believe are machined with parallel grooves by a higher intelligence.
-2,700,000,000 There is barely enough CO2 in the atmosphere to compensate for the faint young Sun, along with significant amounts of greenhouse gases incl. methane; Earth's atmosphere is really rich in CO2?
-2,500,000,000 The Archaean Eon (begun -4B) ends, and the Aphebian (Paleoproterozoic) Era (Protozeroic Phase of the Precambrian Eon) begins (ends -1.6B). Radioactive heat generation in Earth's rocks begins to run out of fuel, and volcanism begins to decline; the first continental land masses begin to form, creating many shallow land masses. In 2000 Timothy Kusky of St. Louis U. and Jiang-Hai Li of Peking U. discover a complete section of oceanic sea floor in Eastern Heibi Province near the Great Wall of China containing ophiolites (Gk. "snake stones") (oceanic crust displaced to the continental level), indicating possible continental collision.
-2,450,000,000 The Great Oxidation Event (Crisis) (Catastrophe) (Holocaust) (Revolution) sees the appearance of photosynthesis cause a sudden rise in oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere as oxygen-producing cyanobacteria in shallow waters crank it up; they were preceded by manganese-oxidizing photosynthesis?; the collective genome undergoes an expansion, bringing 27% of all modern gene families into existence.
-2,400,000,000 The Randian Era (begun -2.8B) ends, and the Huronian Era (Glaciation) begins (ends -2.1B) after the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere consumes atmospheric greenhouse gas methane, creating less powerful greenhouse gas CO2 and chilling the Earth, becoming Earth's first and longest ice age, causing a mass extinction of the simple unicellular life on Earth; the first permafrost is created; pillow basalt lavas delay it even though the Sun's energy is 20% weaker than in modern times.
-2,230,000,000 The 43.5 mi. diam. Yarrabubba Impact Structure in Western Australia is the oldest known meteorite structure on Earth; it lands on Snowball Earth and helps ends it?
-2,200,000,000 A huge asteroid collides with Snowball Earth, ending it?
-2,100,000,000 The Huronian Era (begun -2.45B) ends, and the Animikean Era begins (ends -1.65B). Banded iron formations in rocks indicate dramatic increase in atmospheric oxygen levels, causing iron solutions in the sea to turn to rust and collect as sediments. Widespread occurrence of prokaryotic (no internal membrane) bacterioplankton in the oceans. Diskagma buttonii (Gk. "disc-shaped fragments") in South Africa prove that life on land begins this early?
-2,000,000,000 The oldest magnetofossils on Earth are formed of the mineral magnetite by magnetotactic bacteria in S England and the Gunflint Chert along the N shore of Lake Superior. Humans evolve the ability to throw?
-1,970,000,000 A 6-mi.-dia. comet strikes Vredefort, South Africa, creating the 87-mi.-wide Vredevoort Ring.
-1,850,000,000 A comet strikes the area around Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, creating a 125-mi.-wide ring - see it on Alex Trebek's "Jeopardy!"?
-1,800,000,000 The banded-iron formation era ends; excess oxygen no longer has any iron in the seawater to combine with, so it begins to escape into the atmosphere. A natural nuclear reactor begins operating in Oklo in Gabon, West Africa?
-1,650,000,000 The Aphebian Era (begun -2.5B) ends, and the Helikian Era begins (ends -1B). The Animikean Era (begun -2.2B) ends, and the Riphean (Mesoproterozoic) Period begins (ends -650M), named after the Riphean (Ural) Mts. Animals, plants and fungi diverge as eukaryotic cells (with membranes and nuclei) appear in the form of acritarchs (spherical fossils of planktonic algae).
-1,400,000,000 Atmospheric CO2 levels on Earth are 10x-200x greater than modern levels (7% vs. 0.35%).
-1,250,000,000 The Mid-Pleistocene Transition (Rev.) sees glacial cycles switch from 41K-year periodicity and low amplitude thin ice sheets to strongly assymetric cycles with long-duration cooling and thick ice sheets, with fast changes to a warm interglacial; avg. cycle lengths become 100K years, causing the 100,000-Year Problem, which is explained by decreasing levels of atmospheric CO2 and gradual removal of regoliths.
-1,200,000,000 Rhodophyta (Red algae) appear, along with brown algae, containing chlorophyll and phycobilin pigments. A proteobacterium invades eukaryotes.
-1,100,000,000 The Eratosthenian Period (begun -3.2B) ends, and the Copernican Period on the Moon begins (ends ?); lunar impact craters have bright, optically immature ray systems. About this time the supercontinent of Rodinia (Russ. "to give birth") emerges, causing land to cover 30% of the Earth's surface instead of only 5%; it ends up being surrounded by the single Iapetus Ocean in the S Hemisphere between Scotland, England and Scandinavia by -600M; the Grenville Orogeny causes the Laurentian Mts. to be formed.
-1,000,000,000 The Helikian Era (begun -1.65B) ends, and the Neoproterozoic Era begins (ends -541M); Earth's 2nd Ice Age sees a Snowball Earth (end -550M) covered by a series of global ice sheets, making it a giant snowball subject to a runaway albedo effect, according to Paul F. Hoffman et al. in 1998. The Tonian (Gr. "tonos" = stretch) Period of the Neoproterozoic Era begins (ends -720M). The Lunar Dynamo ends; caused by core crystallization? The Pikes Peak granite formation is formed, made of coarse-grained pink to light red syenogranite with a little gray monzogranite. Green seaweed Proterocladus antiquus emerges, becoming the oldest known ancestor of land plants?
-900,000,000 A cyanobacterium invades eukaryotes.
-850,000,000 Hadrynian (Vendian) Era of the Neoproterozoic Era of the Precambrian Time begins in North Am. (ends -542M). About this time supercontinent Rodinia breaks up after plunging into a snowball state with ice-covered oceans from pole to pole; oxygen builds up in the atmosphere, along with the ozone layer, permitting terrestrial life; the rise in oxygen was really caused by more phosphorus-bearing materials being buried in sediments, decreasing the number of oxygen-breathing organisms to survive?; the number of eukaryotic species burgeons; the first Earth land life appears in the form of a biocrust of bacteria - try Head On, if it doesn't work we'll give you your money back?
-800,000,000 equatorial ice sheets exist on Earth, indicating a high angle of Earth tilt before the Moon exerts full control; the Moon just happens to keep the Earth from wobbling from 0-85 deg. over time, causing the regular change of seasons which keep temperatures in the livable range, and provide for rain; the Moon just happens to be relatively larger than the moons of the giant planets, and serves as a useful light by night - score one zillion for God or Chance? Changes begin in Earth's oxidizing atmosphere begin to lock away phosphorus, reducing phytoplankton growth and oxygen release, turning the atmosphere ferruginous (iron-rich). The earliest Antarctic ice core records of CO2. The first fossilized Mushrooms (mycelium) are discovered in modern-day Dem. Repub. of Congo.
-781,000,000 About this time the Brunhes Matuyama Reversal sees the Earth's magnetic field undergo geomagnetic reversal within the space of a human lifetime, becoming one of 83 reversals from 83M B.C.E. to modern times; scientists predict the next one in the next cent., killing communications satellites and allowing cosmic rays to bombard Earth.
-750,000,000 About this time the supercontinent of Rodinia begins to separate into Euramerica, Siberia, and the largest, Gondwana (Gondwanaland), composed of modern-day South Am., Africa, S Europe, a large portion of the Middle East, India, Australia, New Zealand, and much of Antarctica; it extends from the low N latitudes to the high S latitudes; its index fossil is the Glossopteris; as a land bridge it allows manatees to migrate to W Africa, the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers, and lemurs to Africa, Madagascar and India; they really reached Magadascar via rafting?
-720,000,000 The Tonian Period (begun -1B) ends, and the Cryogenian Period of the Neoproterozoic Era begins (ends -635M), seeing the Sturtian Glaciation (named after Sturt River Gorge in South Australia) and the Marinoan Glaciation (named after Marino near Adelaide, South Australia), the two greatest ice ages in Earth history, creating either a Snowball Earth or Slushball Earth (band of open sea near the equator); global avg. temp is 5C; CO2 level is 1300 ppm; O2 is 60% of modern level; the end of the glaciation releases methane from equatorial permafrost; glacial meltwater provides oxygen to eukaryotes?
-700,000,000 The Aquarius Stream results when the Milky Way pulls apart the smaller Aquarius Constellation. Venus was habitable until now?
-650,000,000 The Riphean Period (begun -1.65M) ends. About this time the global Marinoan Glaciation begins (ends -635M); Snowball Earth sees Earth's surface become entirely frozen; really just a Slushball Earth with a thin equatorial band of seasonally open water? The first burrows appear, indicating the existence of organisms that have a coelom (sac).
-635,000,000 The Cryogenian Period (begun -720M) begins, and the Ediacaran Period, the last period of the Hadrynian Neoproterozoic Era of the Precambrian Time begins (ends -543M/-541M); added in Mar. 2004, becoming the first new period added in 120 years. The Cambrian continents begin to come back together in the Pan-African Orogeny, forming the supercontinent of Pannotia, with a Himalayan-size (2.5km long) mountain range spanning W Africa and NE Brazil sustaining a life explosion.
-600,000,000 Comb jellies (ctenophores) become the most recent ancestor of the sister to all animals.
-580,000,000 The Cnidarians (jellyfish, anemones, hydroids, coral) appear. Complex, multicellular microscopic embryo fossils are discovered in phosphate deposits from this era in China in 1998, incl. sponges and bilaterally symmetrical animals, incl. Ediacaran biota, which become scarc about -543M.
-565,000,000 6.5 ft.long soft-bodied fernlike Rangeomorphs are the earliest known example of procreation in a complex organism.
-560,000,000 Immediately before the Cambrian Explosion there may have been the first mass extinction, that of the Ediacaran (sea anemone-like) biota.
-550,000,000 Seaweed (multicellular marine algae) emerges? The earliest known fossil of a digestive tract.
-550,000,000 atmospheric oxygen on Earth rises from 3% to the modern-day level of 21%, causing complex multicellular animal life to arise; carbon dioxide (CO2) atmospheric concentration is 7K ppm, about 20x modern-day levels. The supercontinent of Pannotia begins breaking up into Laurentia (North Am.), Baltica (N Europe), Siberia, Avalonia (E U.S. to W Europe); Laurasia (-335M) (North Am., Europe, Asia, Greeland, Iceland), and the biggest, Gondwana, which incl. modern-day China, India, Africa, South Am., Australia, and Antarctica; she supercontinent of Gondwana undergoes a 60-degree rotation; the Iapetus Ocean now lies between Laurentia, Baltica, and Avalonia.
-545,000,000 Small Shelly Fossils, the first large animals with mineralized skeletons appear.
-541,000,000 The breath of life really blows? The Hadrynian Era (begun -1B) ends; the 500M-year Precambrian Eon ends along with the (Late) Precambrian Era along with the Ediacaran Period (begun -600M), and the lightning fast (55.6M-year) Cambrian Period of the Paleozoic Era of the Phanerozoic (Present) Eon begins (ends -485.4M); named after the Cambrian (Welsh "Cymru" = Wales") Mts. of Wales by British geologist Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873) (who carried a lucky trilobite in his pocket, or was he just happy to see me?), who divided the period into Lower, Middle, and Upper based on the presence of Olenellus, Paradoxides and Olenus trilobites; the Earth now has the Western Interior Seaway and the Hudson Seaway, shallow seas covering parts of continents, and the modern-day continent of North Am. has two big inland seas, one on the E, where the large mountainous island of Appalachia (modern-day E seaboard of the U.S. and Canada) exists, and the other on the W, where the large mountainous island (peninsula?) of Cascadia (modern-day Alaska, British Columbia, Wash., Ore., N Calif.) exists; the ozone layer and oxygen levels in the atmosphere are developed sufficiently to permit a Cambrian Explosion (Radiation) of thousands of new species (incl. all the modern phyla or basic body plans); the first animals with egg, sperm, embryo, and blastula appear; Saccorhytus coronarius, with a large mouth and no anus is the first living creature?; hard-shelled arthropods appear, the most abundant being the 1-18-in.-long (usually 1-4) swimming, bottom-feeding, 3-lobed trilobites with gills, walking legs, and crescent-shaped eyes (distantly related to the modern horseshoe crab), also coelenterates (with stingers), graptolites (colonial organisms with a skeleton of tough chitinlike material), small, mollusc-like, shelled brachiopods (lampshells), conodonts (cone teeth), annelids (segmented worms), chordates (sea squirts), ctenophores (comb-bearers), echinoderms (starfish), molluscs, and sponges; also foraminifera (single-shelled protists with shells), dinomastigotes, radiolarians; sharp-eyed 1.5-ft.-long trilobite-chomping Anomalocaris (Gk. "abnormal shrimp) is the apex predator; bottom-feeding arthropod Tuzoia looks like a taco; the Cambrian Explosion was really caused by big changes in global plate tectonics?; it was caused by a cascade of events, according to Paul Smith of Oxford U. and David Harper of Durham U - this Instant Powdered Life in the Murky Mud seems so hokey that to prohibit the teaching of alternates to Darwinian Evolutionary Theory in public schools seems like brainwashing, and parents should pull their kids out in protest?
-530,000,000 Archeocyathids, the first reef-forming organisms (sponges) appear in North Am. before becoming the first phylum to become extinct (after 10M-15M years)? The trilobites and brachiopods are thought by many to appear here? - Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall?
-525,000,000 The Chengjiang Cambrian Fossil Site in S China is discovered in 1984 C.E. by Hou Xianguang.
-520,000,000 The earliest known brain fossil is of Alalcomenaeus.
-515,000,000 Insects on Kangaroo Island in S Australia have compound eyes with 3K lenses.
-510,000,000 Map of the continents. Carion granite magnetization in Madagscar takes place in this era, based on the cooling of granitic pluton and paleomagnetic blocking temps.
-505,000,000 The funky Burgess Shale fauna of British Columbia, Canada come from this era, incl. the 3-in. Opabinia arthropod, resembling a swimming lobster tail with five eyes and a vacuum cleaner hose snout, discovered in 1909 by Am. paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott (1850-1927); also the clawed Hallucigenia sparsa worm, ancestor of modern-day velvet worms.
-500,000,000 Volcanoes sprout along the Atlantic Coast, and mountains rise in New England; the Canadian Shield (Laurentian Plateau) is formed. Gondwana begins moving over the South Pole. Limestone is deposited in shallow seas, and there is a great expansion of the marine invertebrates, which include all major groups; the Cambrian trilobites are replaced by graptolites and brachiopods; the Ordovician Biodiversification Event sees an explosion of marine animal life over a period of 25M years, incl. marine invertebrates such as bryozoans (moss animals), crinoids (sea lilies), nautiloids, and corals (epiphyton girvanella); jawless armored ostracoderms, the first primitive jawless fishes; the first vertebrates appear in near-shore tropical waters. Two key DNA mutations set the stage for sex hormones incl. estrogen, testosterone, and cortisol?
-485,400,000 About this time the Cambrian Period of the Paleozoic Era (begun -541M) ends, and the Ordovician Period of the Paleozoic Era begins (ends -443.8M); atmosphic CO2 concentration drops to 4K ppm, going from a greenhouse climate (113F or 45C ocean temps) to 72F, then rapidly rising to 4.5K ppm, with global avg. temps dropping to modern-day temps (60F) about -460M to a million-year ice age. 7-ft.-long Aegirocassis benmoulae in Morocco has modified legs, gills on its back, and a filter system for feeding.
-470,000,000 Map of the continents. The Decorah Crater in Iowa is created by a 200m-wide asteroid, creating a 3.5 mi. diam. crater, which fills up with Winneshiek Shale; discovered in 2013. Huge (up to 2.5m length) scary-looking arthropod Sea Scorpions (Pterygotid eurypterids) range the seas (until -370M).
-468,000,000 A double meteor impact in Jamtland, Sweden (S of Ostersund) produces a 4.7-mi. crater and a 0.5-mi. crater.
-460,000,000 The Shasta Bally (near modern-day Redding, Calif.) is created by volcanic magma. The earliest confirmed fossil of a mushroom?
-455,000,000 Colo. sandstone with abundant fish scales closely resembling those of sharks dating to this era are found by I.J. Sansom and M.P. Smith in 1996.
-450,000,000 The Andean-Saharan Glacian in West Africa, Morocco, and WC Arabia begins (ends -420M), migrating to the S Amazon and Andes. The rise of an early phase of the Appalachian Mts. and cooling oceans allows invasive species to upset the North Am. ecosystem? Land plants appear. Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish) appear. Several groups of soil bacteria acquire a gene from fungi allowing them to break down chitin and use it as food.
-443,800,000 The Ordovician Period of the Paleozoic Era ends, and the Silurian Period of the Paleozoic Era (ends -419M), named after the Silures tribe in SE Wales in 1835 by British geologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871) begins, with high, warm seas; the major continental plates begin to move together; the mountain system in the S of the Iberian Peninsula is located alongside the Alps; the Late Ordovician Glaciation, centered in the Sahara region sees ocean temps 5C cooler than modern-day temps; either the drop in sea level and/or a comet either the drop in the sea level and/or a comet causes the Ordovician-Silurian Extinction Events, the first mass-extinction episode of life on Earth, and 85% of the species become extinct, making room for shelled cephalopods to spread and coral reefs to build in far N seas; great mountains are formed in NW Europe, and another range on a NW-SE line through Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and New England by the Taconian Disturbance in the island continent of Appalachia lying between the Atlantic Ocean and an inland sea, causing volcanism in the area of Maine, New Brunswick and Quebec, forming deposits up to 2 mi. thick; later the highlands erode and deposit detritus over E Penn. and SE N.Y.; trilobites begin to decline, and seaweed becomes the dominant plant life; sponges and corals flourish; brachiopods and crustaceans dominate on land; the beginning of widespread air-breathing life on land, incl. myriapods (centipedes and millipedes) and semi-aquatic eurypterids (sea scorpions) (largest known athropods), xiphosurids (horseshoe crabs), scorpions; brachiopods predominate in the sea; jawed fishes incl. placoderms appear; jawless fish live in fresh water, and can't survive without shallow seas?; appearance of the first small land vascular plants (tracheophytes), incl. lycopods and rhyniophytes (rhyniophytina) (Paratracheophytes) with fungi in plant roots.
-438,000,000 atmospheric CO2 concentration drops to 3K ppm, while global avg. temps shoot up to 72F.
-430,000,000 Map of the continents. Sharks arrive in the oceans, and evolve into 500+ different species, more than half being 3 ft. long or smaller, all with cartilaginous skeletons, sandpaper skin, 5-7 gill slits on the side of the head, pectoral fins not fused to the head, and no swim bladders, using their oily livers to help keep them afloat, along with continuous swimming. The earliest homo sapiens live in Israel?; found in 2010.
-425,000,000 The eye begins to emerge as structures develop to supplement retinal oxygen supply? A fossil of Colymbosathon ecplecticos ("amazing swimmer with large penis") of the ostracode species group is found under volcanic ash in a rock bed in Herefordshire, England in 2003, with its soft body parts mineralized, becoming the oldest male fossil ever discovered. In the later Silurian Period a large arid basin is formed in N.Y., Penn., Ontario, and Mich., the middle trapping a portion of the inland sea and forming a vast shallow salt lake.
-419,000,000 The Silurian Period of the Paleozoic Era ends, and the Devonian Period of the Paleozoic Era begins (ends -359M); the land is extensively forested, and the first plants with seeds appear, incl. the first large trees. The Acari (Acarina) subclass of Arachnida appears, incl. mites and ticks. Entelognathus primordialis (Lat. "primordial complete jaw"), the earliest fish fossil with modern jaw and facial bones lives in Qujing, Yunnan, China.
-417,000,000 The earliest chitin and structural protein recovered from fossils.
-420,000,000 Prototaxites, whose fossils resemble 20-ft. tree tunks and seem to be lichen, algae, or fungi appear, becoming a modern mystery.
-410,000,000 Mountains are raised in New England. Brachiopods reach their maximum development. The first vertebrates appear on land. Major radiation of primitive bony fish (osteichthyes), incl. the sharks, and rhipidistia (crossopterygians) (lobefins), ancestor of the amphibians and the coelecanth. The first ammonites appear; they die out at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
-400,000,000 Map of the continents. The year is 400 days, the Moon is closer than it is now, and the Earth is spinning faster. Greenland is nearly ice-free. The appearance of vascular plants (tracheophytes) and large predatory fish coincide with increased oxygen levels; the first fires appear? Placoderms radiate and begin to dominate brackish and near-shore waters; the oceans are the domain of fierce, toothy meat-eaters living the eat-or-be-eaten predatory life style; the sturdy coelacanth (still exists today) appears - didn't fossilize? About this time the Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) diverges from the steppe mammoth in E Asia, with about the same size as modern African elephants, although its closest modern-day relative is the Asian elephant. 8-legged spiders appear - I'd like to hear that story?
-398,000,000 2.4 in. (6 cm) long Palaeospondylus has well-developed fins but no limbs or teeth; our earliest known ancestor?
-393,000,000 The lobe-finned elpistostegian fish develop the first rudimentary hands.
-385,000,000 The first 6-legged Insect appears, a wingless silverfish-like creature; there is no more sign of insects until -325M, known as the Hexapod Gap; caused by an atmospheric O2 concentration of only 15%?
-380,000,000 Gogonasus ("snout from Gogo"), a lobe-finned fish from the Gogo Formation in Western Australia has fins with the precursors of the forearm, radius and ulna, along with the structure of the middle ear.
-375,000,000 The Appalachian Mtns. are formed by the collision of Laurentia and Gondwana. Gymnosperms (cone-bearing plants) appear. Fish-tetrapods take a lot of licking but keep on ticking? 4-9-ft. Tiktaalik roseae in the Canadian Arctic, a transitional fish whose forward fins have rudimentary digits, wrists, elbows and shoulders, and whose crocodile-like skull, neck, ribs and other parts are similar to tetrapods lives in the Canadian Arctic in modern-day Ellesmere Island; reported in 2006 by Neil H. Shubin of the U. of Chicago.
-370,000,000 Archaeopteris, the first tree appears, providing the first organic shade.
-365,000,000 A 2-ft.-long Devonian tetrapod living in W Penn. is the first fish-amphibian link, with a humerus that can do push-ups - the first Action Jackson?
-360,000,000 The Karoo Ice Age (Late Paleozoic Icehouse) (named after the Karoo Basin in South Africa) begins (ends -260M), causing contintel glaciers over much of Gondwana. Despite the first vertebrates crawling from water to land, the Late Devonian Kellwasser Event, the 2nd mass extinction of life on Earth occurs, wiping out 80% of species, mostly marine, incl. most of the fish, caused by a comet impact in the ocean; ostracoderms and placoderms (the first fishes) become extinct. Amphibians are the first tetrapods to evolve from fish ancestors; the Hangenberg Event, an anoxic period in the late Devonian marked by black shale causes Romer's Gap of about 15M years, which is almost devoid of tetrapods, named in 1995 after Am. paleontologist Alfred Sherwood Romer (1894-1973), who thought that fish developed limbs to help them cross the desert to find another shrinking pond; Ichthyostega "the original four-legged fish" is the first found. The oldest known fossil of a shrimp is found in Okla.
-358,900,000 The Devonian Period of the Paleozoic Era (begun -419M) ends, and the Lower or Early Carboniferous (coal-forming) Period of the Paleozoic Era begins (ends -290M), starting with the Mississippian Subperiod (ends -323M), with avg. global temps of 20C (68F), cooling during the Middle Carboniferous to 12C (54F), with 22.4-hour day creating a stronger Coriolis effect and winds, and atmospheric oxygen content of 35% allowing terrestrial invertebrates esp. insects and amphibians to grow to great sizes; lower sea levels than in the Devonian Period allow swamps and forests to expand in North Am. and Europe, and the first bark-bearing trees to appear along with wood fiber lignin and waxy bark-sealing suberin enjoying a lack of enzymes for them in bacteria, allowing large quantities of wood to be buried; marine beds are common in E North Am. in the early part of the period, almost disappearing by the end; trilobites become uncommon, and marine life becomes rich in crinoids (sea lillies) and other echinoderms, as well as brachiopods (lamp shells); coniferous trees appear in the late Carboniferous, on higher ground; petroleum arises from layers of dead plants and animals?
-350,000,000 The Earth year is 385 23-hour days. The carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the air is about the same as modern times, rising by -200M to 4x-5x modern-day levels. Extension of reef-building corals (coelenterates) and coralline (rhodophyte) algae. Major radiation of crinoids, who achieve their maximum development. Archimylacris eggintoni, ancestor of the modern cockroach emerges, causing the Carboniferous Period to become the Age of the Cockroach. Plated silk-less 8-legged arachnid spiders Cryptomartus hindi and Eophrynus (Gk. "Eo" = dawn") emerge in Europe. Land animals are rare; the first reptiles (Lat. "reptilis" = crawling or creeping) appear, starting with the Hylonomus ("forest dweller") lyelli of Nova Scotia; the Pelycosaurs (Gk. "pelyx" + "sauros" = bowl/axe + lizard) (mammal-like reptiles) are the first synapsids (Gk. "fused arch") (AKA theropsids = "beast face") (ancestor of the mammals). Land plants diversify, incl. many ancient kinds of trees. Sharks of relatively modern types appear. The Redwall Limestone Layer in the Grand Canyon in Ariz. is formed.
-340,000,000 Map of the continents. The Jenolan Caves W of the Blue Mountains in N.S.W., Australia are formed.
-335,000,000 Earth turns over a new leaf? The supercontinent of Pangaea (Pangea) is formed by Gondwana and Laurasia; the vast global Panthalassa Ocean is born (until -175M; the Ancestral Rockies are formed; Pangaea begins to break up about -175M.
-325,000,000 The Hexapod Gap (begun -385M) ends, and flying insects explode in the rock record. The diapsids (ancestor of the dinosaurs, crocodiles and pterosaurs) emerge, but are dominated by the synapsids. Lichens emerge from coupling of fungi and algae. The X-Y sex chromosomes diverge, and sex is born - who 'did it' first?
-323,000,000 The Mississippian (Lower Carboniferous) Period of the Paleozoic Era ends, and the Pennsylvanian (Upper or Late Carboniferous) Period of the Paleozoic Era begins (ends -299M); mountains are raised along the E coast of North Am. and C Europe; lush, moist seed-bearing fern forests populated by amphibians and winged insects in the N hemisphere produce vast coal reserves composed primarily of carbon.
-315,000,000 About this time a 45M-year cold spell causes global avg. temps to drop to 54F, establishing most of Earth's coal fields. The caecilian Chinlestegophis jenkinsi and the toilet-head sterospondyls diverge from a common ancestor.
-306,000,000 Dendronaia unamakiensis, a land-dwelling vertebrate that resembles a modern-day monitor lizard becomes the first to parent its young?
-300,000,000 The Carboniferous Period (begun -360M) ends, and the Permo-Carboniferous Era begins (ends -250M), becoming the longest and severest glaciation of the Phanerozoic Eon, with an ice sheet covering a circle spanning 50 deg of latitude around the South Pole, and CO2 levels of 313-344 ppm, giving the first evidence for continental drift. Baltica and Siberia collide, forming the Urals. Conifers emerge. Insects develop the ability to fly; Meganeura is the largest insect ever. Terrestrial vertebrates incl. lungfish and salamanders develop hearing sans outer or tympanic middle ear. A double comet impact occurs in Canada, causing the formation of Clearwater Lakes near Quebec.
-290,000,000 The Pennsylvanian Period of the Paleozoic Era ends, and the Permian Period (7th and last) of the Paleozoic Era begins (ends -252M), characterized by glaciation in the S Hemisphere incl. permafrost, the final folding of the Appalachians and C European ranges, and reefs in warm N seas; the coal forests decline, and conifers (firs) and ferns replace them; the first cycads and ammonites appear; the trilobites become extinct; amniotes (egg-layers) diversify into large amphibians, mammal-like and bird-like, and lizards incl. dinosaurs (archosaurs), which surpass the amphibians; atmospheric CO2 concentration is 900 ppm, and avg. surface temp is about 16C, with 23% O2 in the atmosphere.
-280,000,000 Radiolarians and other protists abound in marine sediments. The sail-back pelycosaur Dimetrodon appears. 5-ft.-long amphibian Eryops appears, and is among the largest land animals of its time. Earwigs appear, with a unique folding wing.
-270,000,000 Map of the continents. The therapsids (mammal-like reptiles) emerge from the synapsids (pelycosaurs) (Phenacodont), replacing the pelycosaurs as the dominant large land animals, with their four limbs extending vertically beneath the body; the crocodile-like thecodonts (Gk. "socket teeth") (ancestor of dinosaurs) emerge from the diapsids.
The 13-ft.-long therapsid Estemmenosuchus ("crowned reptile") looks like a dino moose? The seed-bearing Gigantopterids (ancestor of flowering plants) emerge. Suminia getmanov is the first tree-dwelling mammal, 30M years before the arrival of dinosaurs?; 15 skeletons are discovered in C Russia in 2009.
-252,000,000 The Permian Period of the Paleozoic Era ends, and the Triassic Period (ends -201M) of the Mesozoic Era (Age of the Reptiles) begins (ends -66M); atmospheric CO2 levels rise to 1.2K-1.8K ppm, with global avg. temps of 72F; the hot flat dry C-shaped supercontinent of Pangea encloses the Tethys Sea (Ocean), and has a hothouse climate with inland deserts; the three subperiods are Buntsandstein (Lower), Muschelkalk (Middle) (Ger. "shellbearing limestone"), and Keuper (Upper); lava flows in E North Am.; ferns and cycads dominate land plants; insects of modern types appear. Over the next 5M-10M years the P-T (Permian-Triassic) Extinction Event (Great Dying) (Earth's third) loses 75%-95% of all species, mostly in the sea, incl. 80%-96% of the marine species and 57% of all marine families, plus 70% of land species, incl. gigantopterids; crinoids are hard-hit; 36 of 48 families of amphibians and reptiles die out; sea urchin species drop from 20-30 to 1-2; trilobites and pelycosaurs become extinct; the mass extinction peaks at -252.28 and lasts less than 200K years, with most of the extinction lasting about 20K years; the primary cause of the extinction is volcanoes, which leave the Siberian Traps (Swedish "trappa" = stairs) (-251.9M to -249.9M); it takes 10M years for a fully-functioning ecosystem to develop; parareptiles are not affected?; was this extinction triggered by an impact event of a comet or 7-mi.-diam. asteroid (Luann Becker et al. of the U. of Wash., 2001), or volcanoes (the Siberian Traps) in Siberia (triggering the poisoning of marine life with carbon dioxide, and the extinction of terrestrial life via a global greenhouse effect), or a geomagnetic reversal, or a mammoth undersea methane buildup caused by a mutation in the Methanosarcina microbe, or did the lack of scattered continents and cold poles cause the ocean to become stagnant and fill with CO2? (Andrew H. Knoll of Harvard U., 1996)?; computer models by Jonathan Payne and Erik Sperling of Stanford U. in 2018 find that the warmer oceans lost about 80% of their oxygen, and about half of the ocean sea floor became oxygen-free, favoring species living in the tropics; another in 2019 by Justin Penn and Curtis Deutsch of the U. of Washington finds that sea surface temperatures rose by 11C (20F) from elevated greenhouse gases, causing 76% oxygen depletion, depleting 40% of the sea floor of oxygen - maybe this is where the part in the Bible about giants in the Earth and Noah's Flood comes in? Finless (undulating) Ichthyosaurs (Gk. "fish lizard") (up to 75 ft. long) appear, going on to rule the oceans (until -90M), along with modern sharks. Therapsid synapsid Moschops (Gk. "calf face") is a 16-ft.-long herding herbivore in Karoo, South Africa that goes extinct before the dinosaurs emerge. Termites appear - causing the emergence of anti-Termites A reef is formed in SE N.M. that later becomes Carlsbad Caverns.
-251,000,000 The Siberian Traps in Siberia are formed by a massive volcanic eruption that lasts 2M years, leaving 7M sq. km of basaltic rock with a vol. of 4M cubic km. by modern times.
-250,000,000 Atmospheric CO2 levels jump to 7K ppm, while global avg. temps are 60F; a major expansion and radiation of reptiles begins; the archosaurs (flying reptiles), incl. the pterosaurs (Gk. "ptero" + "saurus" = winged lizard) (Gk. "ptero" + "daktulos" = winged finger), the first reptiles capable of powered flight emerge from the diapsids; pterosaurs take off by pole-vaulting over their wings?; pterosaurs appear 50M years before the first bird Archaeopteryx, but don't really begin evolving until after that, getting more specialized for their 160M years?
-240,000,000 The ice age (begun -330M) ends. The continent of Greater Adria breaks off from North Africa, lasting 120M years before sinking beneath S Europe? The emergence of angiosperms (flowering plants)? Tusked dog-sized mammal-like herbivore tetrapod therapsid reptile Lystrosaurus georgi ("shovel reptile") is one of very few creatures to survive the mass extinction, living in China, S Africa, and Antarctica; discovered in 1969 at Coalsack Bluff in the Antarctic, indicating that it was once connected by land to Africa, where it was common - the Flintstone's pet Dino? The reptile Pappochelys, whose belly is encased by rod-like bones lives in S Germany, becoming a missing link in the evolution of turtles after being studied in 2006-15.
-237,000,000 4-in.-tall insect eating reptile Kongonaphon kely (Gr. "tiny bug-slayer") lives in the jungles of modern-day SW Madagascar, becoming the ancestor of giant dinosaurs: discovered in 1998 by John Flynn of the Am. Museum.
-235,000,000 There is a 20% reduction in gravity, and the Earth is filled with relatively shallow seas containing several large animals (until -65M). Ferns become abundant again. Early Dinosaurs emerge, incl. Eoraptor, discovered by by Am. paleontologist Paul Callistus Sereno (1957-) of the U. of Chicago in the Valley of the Moon in South Am. in 1991), Herrerasaurus, and Pisanosaurus emerge from the crocodile-like thecodonts; the Plesiosaurs (with up to 20-ft. necks) take to the sea; they give live birth; most dinosaurs were warm-blooded?; they grow to gigantic sizes because of reduced gravity? Gerrothorax is a 3-ft.-long flat carnivorous amphibian with upward-facing eyes that eats fish. 16-ft.-long spiked armored crocodile-like Desmatosuchus (Gk. "link crocodile") is not a dinosaur (though it might play one on TV?), but a small-headed herbivore thecodont aetosaur. The mammals emerge from the therapsids - there on the edge of darkness lies a peace train?
-230,000,000 Map of the continents. About this time the Carnian Pluvial Episode (Event) (Raibi Event) (-234M?) sees widespread extinction of green algae, bryozoa, ammonoids, and conodonts, along with radiation of dinosaurs, corals, crinoids, and calcareous nanofossils; the earliest known dinosaur is dog-sized Eoraptor in Argentina; it rains for 2M years? 4-ft.-long 15 lb. Eodromaeus (Gk. "dawn runner") lives in the Valley of the Moon in the Andes Mts. of South Am., becoming an ancestor of T-Rex. Daemonosaurus chauliodus (Gk. "buck-toothed') arises in Argentina and Brazil as an evolutionary link with the more advanced theropods.
-226,000,000 The last time the Sun is in the same spot in its galactic orbit that it is in modern times.
-220,000,000 20-ft.-long Teratosaurus is the earliest carnosaur. The thecodonts and dinosaurs begin to challenge the dominance of the therapsids; all dinosaurs originated in South Am.? The therapsid herbivore Saltopus (Gk. "hopping foot") of Elgin, Scotland is a 2-ft.-long 2 lb. dinosaur just begging to be eaten?
-215,000,000 Oxygen levels leap by nearly one-third (15% to 19%) in three million years, allowing dinosaurs to rise?; CO2 levels drop.
-214,000,000 Pangea begins to separate into N (Laurasia) and S (Gondwana) hemisphere continents; the Sierra Nevada mountains are uplifted. About this time (-201M?) the (Fourth) Triassic-Jurassic Mass Extinction sees a giant meteor or comet impact the N hemisphere in five large fragments, leading to the fourth (3rd largest) mass-extinction (75%-84%) that almost wipes out the dominant therapsids esp. the large-body crocodilian reptiles called the pseudosuchia, clearing the stage for the Age of the Dinosaurs; the fragments impact in Quebec and Saint Martin, Canada, Red Wing, N.D., France, and Ukraine; the largest fragment produces the 62-mi.-dia. Manicouagan Crater in Quebec; a 9% oxygen drop in Earth's atmosphere is aided by a geomagnetic reversal that strips 218T tons (4.5%) of the oxygen from Earth's atmosphere?; eruptions in the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province trigger the extinction, with low volcanic temperatures causing high sulfur dioxide and low CO2 emissions? Gymnosperms (conifers and cycads) become the dominant land flora. The Siphonaptera (fleas) appear about this time. Frogs and toads inherit the Earth from the large amphibians; turtles appear, such as 10-ft.-long Volkwagen-sized Protostega (Gk. "sea roof"), the 2nd largest turtle after Archelon. The long-necked, long-tailed, 4-legged herbivore sauropods (Gk. "lizard-footed") dinosaurs become the largest and heaviest land animals ever; the ones in the S Hemispere are larger than those in the N Hemisphere; the heaviest sauropod is the 100-ton 140-ft.-long Argentinosaurus ("Argentina lizard"), discovered in 1994 (its vertebrae are 5 ft. high and 5 ft. wide). The bipedal herbivore Plateosaurus, with short muscular arms, grasping hands w/large claws on three fingers is the first really big (16-33ft.-long, 1.3K-8.8K lb.) (and dumb) dinosaur. Rat-like 4-in.-long homeothermic (warm-blooded) Morganucodon ("Morgie") is the earliest known mammal; 5K species of mammals begin to emerge from the magic muck machine, incl. 2K species of rodents, 200 species of primates, 330 species of ungulates, 1.1K species of bats (Order Chiroptera = "hand wings"), all with hairy hair hair hair, special bones in their inner ears, and those warm mammalian vaginas we all love so much?
-205,000,000 The 85-ft.-long ichtyosaur is the animal that ever lived, before the blue whale?
-201,300,000 The Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era ends, and the Jurassic Period (named after the Jura Mountains) of the Mesozoic Era begins (the three subperiods are Lower or Black or Lias, Middle or Brown or Dogger, Upper or White or Malm) (ends -145M).
-200,000,000 The length of the day is 23 hours, and the year is 385 days. The 9-ft.-long pack-hunting Coelophysis is discovered in 1881 by David Baldwin. Cryolophosaurus is a crested meat-eating dinosaur (therapod) with an unusual bony crest on its forehead that lives on the coast of Gondwanaland (first meat-eating dino found in Antarctica); discovered in 1994 400 mi. from the South Pole by William R. Hammer and William J. Hickerson of Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill. Beetles appear (400K species) (largest group within the insects), incl. the rove beetles (45K species); they later become big pollinators of 88% of the 240K flowering angiosperms. Crocodyliforms appear, incl. plant-eating varieties. 3m-to-4m-long Thalattosaurs appear in equatorial oceans, a marine reptile with pointy beaks and long flat tails. The tadpole shrimp appears, becoming the oldest unchanged animal to survive to modern times? The 3-eyed tuatara appears, surviving in New Zealand to modern times. The elephant-sized herbivorous dicynodont (belonging to the mammal-like therapsid order of reptiles) Lisowicia bojani lives in Poland.
-193,000,000 10-ft.-tall 23-ft.-long 880 lb. Dilophosaurus (Gr. "two-crested lizard") in N Ariz. (discovered in 1940-2) has two longitudinal crests on its skull, and likes to eat fat geekasaurii?; the 1993 film "Jurassic Park" is moose hockey, making it only 4 ft. tall and giving it a deployable scare-frill and the ability to spit poison. The Scelidosaurus lives in modern-day Charmouth, W Dorset, England; in 2020 it becomes the first complete dinosaur skeleton to be reconstructed after 162 years in storage at the Nat. History Museum in London. rtaew
-190,000,000 Moths emerge. The oldest fossils, Phytoplankton begins diversifying, incl. 1-celled Diatoms, discovered in 1783 by Danish naturalist Otto Friedrich Mueller (Müller) (1730-84). 14-ft.-long 250 lb. Sarahsaurus emerges in South Am., a sauropodomorph, a small close relative of the sauropods, migrating into North Am. after other creatures leave, not by aggressive invasion?; discovered the Early Jurassic Kayenta Formation (formed in -199M to -182M) near Gold Spring, Ariz. in 1997, and named after philanthropist Mrs. Sarah Butler of Austin, Tex.
-186,000,000 A meteor strikes the Vienne Valley in C France, producing a 14-mi.-dia. crater; a mass-extinction extinguishes 80% of marine bivalve species plus other shallow-water species.
-180,000,000 Atmospheric CO2 levels rise to 1.2K-2.5K ppm, and global avg. temps drop to 61F. The Omineca Episode, creating the Omineca Highlands (Arc) in NW North Am. begins (ends -115M). A volcanic explosion in Northern China causes the salamanders to emerge?
-175,000,000 In the Middle Jurassic (Dogger) Period the supercontinent of Pangea begins to break up into Africa, India, Australia-Antarctica, and South Am.; the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean appear; the oldest remaining ocean sediment dates to this time; the amount of salt in modern-day oceans would cover all of Earth's land 400 ft. high?; the modern-day Arafura Sea starts as a land bridge between Asia and Australia?
-170,000,000 Map of the continents. A change in predator-prey relationships begins as calcium carbonate-secreting plankton cover the ocean floor with chalk, stabilizing its composition and balancing its acidity, allowing the production of calcium carbonate to expand from the continental shelves into the open ocean, reducing the evolutionary impact of severe climate changes and permitting a new level of diversification of life.
-168,300,000 The Bathonian Age begins in Bath, England (ends -166.1M), with the first Ammonite marine mollusc species appearing; first pub. in 1843 by Belgian geologist Jean Baptiste Julien d'Omalius d'Halloy (1783-1875). Small (9.8 ft.-long) carnivorous theropod dinosaur Proceratosaurus in England is the earliest known ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus Rex?
-168,000,000 The stegosaurus Adratiklit boulahfa (Berber "Adras" + "tiklit" = mountain lizard) lives in modern-day Morocco (Gondwana), becoming the oldest stegosaur known and first found in modern-day North Africa.
-165,000,000 Wootton Bassett mud springs date to this era. The dinosaurs take over the sea, incl. 30-ft.-long Megalosaurus in S England (the first dinosaur to be scientifically named), 165-ton 80-ft.-long Liopleurodon in Europe, 26-ft.long Cryptoclidus in England, and 18-ft.-long deep water Opthalmosaurus (Gk. "eye lizard") in North Am. and Europe. Madagascar begins separating from Africa after a giant earthquake. The Weddell Sea in Antarctica begins to form. Life becomes extinct on Mars?
-164,000,000 The 60-ft.-long 20-ton sauropod Jobaria lives in the lush Sahara Jungle (modern-day Sahara Desert in Niger); discovered in 1997 by Alan Grant, er, Paul Callistus Sereno (1957-) of the U. of Chicago.
-160,000,000 The Morrison Formation of the W U.S. incl. Colo. is formed, later filling up the Denver Museum of Natural History. The Late (Malm) Jurassic Period (ends -145M) sees Europe become an archipelago; crowd-pleasing new dinosaur species emerge, incl. 9-ft.-long Guanlong wucaii ("crowned dragon of the five colored rocks") (ancestor of the T-Rex?) lives in NW China, the snout topped by a spectacular crest running from the tip of the nose to the top of the head; discovered in 2005 by a Chinese laborer; 6.5-ft.-long Ornitholestes (Gk. "bird robber") in Medicine Bow, Wyo.; 10-ft.-long Dryosaurus (Gk. "tree lizard") in W U.S.; 10-ft.-long 1-ton Gargoyleosaurus (Gk. "gargoyle lizard") in Albany County, Wyo. 20-ft.-long theropod Ceratosaurus (Gk. "horned lizard") in W U.S. and Portugal; 23-ft-.long Camptosaurus (Gk. "flexible lizard") In W U.S.; 30-ft.-long walnut-size-brain armored herbivore Stegosaurus (Gk. "covered lizard") in W U.S. (Morrison Formation) and Portugal, discovered in 1877 by Yale U. paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99), and given the name Antrodemus, becoming one of the first well-known theropod dinosaurs; chicken-sized bipedal theropod Anchiornis huxleyi ("T.H. Huxley's near-bird") in Liaoning Province, China has long black-white feathers on its arms and legs plus a red plume, as determined from fossil melanosomes in Feb. 2010, becoming the first Mesozoic dinosaur species to have its entire life appearance determined. 38-ft.-long Allosaurus (Gk. "different lizard") (largest carnivore in North Am.); 85-ft. long sauropod dinosaur Brachiosaurus (Gk. "long-armed lizard") in the Morrison Formation; 90-ft.-long Apatosaurus (Gk. "deceptive lizard"), formerly called Brontosaurus (Gk. "thunder lizard"), coined in 1879 by Yale U. paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-99) until a war with Philly Academy of Natural Sciences rival Edward Drinker Cope (1840-97) is settled in Cope's favor in the early 20th cent.; the Brontosaurus name is restored in 2015; 90-ft.-long 45-ft.-tall 12-to-18-ton long-necked plant-eating Diplodocus (Gk. "double-beamed") (coined in 1878 by Othniel Marsh) of W North Am.; 138-ft.-long Supersaurus in the Morrison Formation and Portugal, and its ephemeral alternate name Ultrasaurus. Flowering plants (angiosperms) (350K species) begin to emerge from ??? ("an abominable mystery" - Charles Darwin, 1879); it all started with pine cones?; their radiation causes mammal disparity to decrease? Fossilized ichthyosaur vomit is found in a quarry in Peterborough, Cambs, England, and announced on Feb. 12, 2002 by a team of paleontologists led by Peter Doyle of the U. of Greenwich; is it really vomit?
-155,000,000 60-ft. 20-ton Camarasaurus (Gk. "chambered lizard") lives in North Am. (Morrison Formation); a 20-ft. 1-ton dwarf version Europasaurus holgeri lives in NW Germany in an island on shallow seas, according to P. Martin Sander of the U. of Bonn (2006). 29-ft. 1.8-ton Allosaurus jimmadseni lives in W North Am., becoming the oldest known species of Allosaurus.
-153,000,000 A fossilized feater of magpie-size bird-like dino Archaeopteryx (Gk. "ancient wing/feather") (Ger. Urvogel = first bird), the most primitive known bird is found in Late Jurassic limestones in the Aolhofen area of Bavaria, S Germany in 1861; birds are the only surviving example of Dinosauromorphs, the direct sister groups of dinosaurs; too bad, in 2019 the feather is reported to not be from Archaeopteryx, but a relative; in 1970 Yale U. paleontologist John Harold Ostrom (1928-2005) discovers a miscatalogued specimen among pterosaurs in a museum in Haarlem, Netherlands, prompting him in 1976 to repopularize the 19th cent. hypothesis that carnivorous dinos are direct ancestors of today's birds, which is deflated by a 2009 discovery by researchers at Oregon State U. about how birds breathe; by 2005 only 10 archaeopteryx specimens are found; one specimen sells for $1.3M in 1999; another ends up in the private Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis, Wyo. in 2005; in 2009 Gregory M. Erickson of Fla. State U. claims that its slow bone growth makes a feathered dino not capable of flight - it's my favorite movie?
-150,000,000 North Am. begins to drift away from Europe; the Klamath and Peninsular ranges of coastal California (Calif.) are formed. The Mongol-Okhotsk ocean bed begins subducting towards the bottom of the mantle. The age of dinosaurs continues; thermoregulation develops in dinosaurs and mammal-like reptiles. 23-in.-long 6.5-lb. chicken-sized theropod Compsognathus (Gk. "pretty jaw") lives in S Germany and SE France. 5-ton 10m-long T. gurneyi lives in the Iberian Peninsula, becoming the largest land predator in Europe. A fossilized squid in Trowbridge, Wiltshire from this era is dug up in 2009, and ink is recovered from its ink sac, allowing an artist to draw its likeness. The genus Equisetum, oldest genus of land plant to survive to modern times (horsetail or scouring rush) diverges. The bony paranha-like pycnodontid in South Germany feeds on the fins of other fish.
-145,000,000 The Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era (begun -201.3M) ends, and the Cretaceous Period (Lat. "creta" = chalk) of the Mesozoic Era begins (ends -66M), an era of a greenhouse climate (warmest period in the last 600M years), with no ice in the polar regions and the climate of Alaska like that of Oregon; atmospheric CO2 levels drop to 1.5k ppm, continuing a downward slide to the Industrial Age that began about -175M; the spread of reptiles and the development of flowering plants begins; bony fish begin a major radiation; in the U.S. the Lower Cretacean is also called the Comanchean, after the Comanches of Texas; another mass-extinction occurs, and most sauropods in the N Hemisphere, along with stegosaurus, allosaurus, ceratosaurus, ornitholestes et al. become extinct - no likey de steam baths? The Cretaceous Crab Revolution begins (ends -66M), causing crab diversity to explode, resulting in 80% of the higher known clades. Fukuipteryx prima lives in Japan, becoming the first species of Early Cretaceous bird found outside China; it contains a pygostyle (triangle of fused spinal vertebrae at the base of the tail), which the birds from China all lack. Pterosaur Dsungaripterus (Junggar + Gk. "pteron" = wing) is a flying reptile with 10-ft.-wide leathery wings that lives in the Junggar Basin in China, becoming the first fossil found there; named in 1964 by Chinese paleontologist Yang Zhongjian (Chung Chien Young) (1897-1979). Tamu Massif 1K mi. E of Japan, the world's largest volcano is formed.
-140,000,000 Map of the continents. The hidden continent of Greater Adria is created after a continent the size of Greenland breaks off from North Africa and is buried in the Earth's mantle under Southern Europe; discovered by Douwe van Hinsbergen of Utrecht U. in 2019. An asteroid impacts Australia's Northern Territories, producing a ring of mountains 14 mi. across.
-137,000,000 After high levels of CO2 raise global temps and melt polar ice, a sudden sea temp. drop in the Atlantic Gulf Stream from 13C (55F) to 4C-7C (39F-44F) occurs, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs by -65M, not a meteor, according to Gregory Price et al. of Plymouth U.
-135,000,000 59-ft.-long 20+-ton Spinosaurus aegyptiacus (Gk. "spine lizard from Egypt"), biggest predatory dino of all time and first water-dwelling dinosaur is discovered in 1911 by German paleontologist Baron Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach (1871-1952). Birdlike Hesperornis and Ichthyornis appear in Canada and the U.S. 13-ft.-long herbivore Hylaeosaurus ("woodland lizard") appears, becoming the 3rd dinosaur to be (1833). The 13-ft. oceanic crocodile Dakosaurus andiniensis, nicknamed "Godzilla", the "chico malo" (bad boy) of the ocean is the first croc to have a mouthful of large, deadly teeth that beg for lunch all the time; discovered in 1996 in Argentina.
-130,000,000 Baryonyx (Gk. "heavy claw") has 1-ft.-long claws and crocodile-like teeth and lives in England; discovered by William J. Walker; the only known dinosaur that ate fish? 33-ft.-long Amargasaurus from Argentina had a double row of spines along its backbone. 30-ft.-long Afrovenator abakensis (Gk. "African hunter") (discovered in Nigeria by Paul Sereno of the U. of Chicago) is the most complete Cretaceous skeleton ever found, its existence implying a land bridge between Africa and Europe after the breakup of Pangea? Dino-eating mammals? 2-ft.-long 15-lb. opossum-sized mammal Repenomamus robustus, and its big brother, 3-ft.-long 30-lb. Repenomamus giganticus (largest Cretaceous mammal), hunt and eat small dinosaurs, such as the 5-in. "parrot dinosaur" Psittacosaurus (Gk. "parrot lizard") (discovered in Yixian in Liaoning Province in NE China in 2002). Ants emerge from wasp-like ancestors, starting with Martialis heureka (Gk. "ant from Mars"), and branching into 22K species, all with elbowed antenna and a node-like structure with a slender waist. The Isle of Wight is plagued by fires and floods, leaving a treasure trove of fossils for modern scientists. The icthyosaur Acamptonectes densus (Gk. "stiff swimmer") lives in the Braunschweig area of N Germany.
-129,000,000 The Barremian Age of the early Cretaceous Epoch begins (ends -125M). Morel mushrooms split from all other fungal species, evolving into 177 related species.
-128,000,000 5-ft.-long mini-tyrannosaur therapod Dilong is discovered in China in 2004, complete with protofeathers.
-126,000,000 Large bulky herbivore ornithopod Iguanadon (Gk. "iguana tooth") with large thumb spikes and a long prehensile 5th fingers appears in Belgium. Utahraptor, discovered in 1991 in E Utah is a 16-23 ft.-long pack hunter with a high IQ?
-125,000,000 Four-winged Microraptor gui dinosaurs sail around in China; the first biplane dinos (upper and lower sets of wings), according to Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech U. in 2007. Ornithopod Hypsilophodon (Gk. "hypsilophus-tooth"), discovered on the Isle of Wight in 1849 is the dino version of the kangaroo. 8-ft.-long Raptorex (Gk. "king robber") about 1% the size of T-Rex is discovered in 2009 in Mongolia by Am. paleontologist Paul Callistus Sereno (1957-) of the U. of Chicago; too bad, it's a juvenile specimen, making the classification dubious. Ornithocheirus is a pterosaur with a 12-ft. wingspan. Speedy 10-ft. 150 lb. stripey early Cretaceous Deinonychus (Gk. "terrible claw"), a pack-hunting dino with a 3-fingered grasping hand and a foot with an inner toe that sticks out like a sharply curved sickle is discovered in Aug. 1964 by Yale U. paleontologist John Harold Ostrom (1928-2005) and his asst. Grant E. Meyer in S Mont.; in his research report, Ostrom describes it as a raptor, killing its prey by leaping and slashing with its claw, suggesting a high metabolism rate and thus warm-blooded system, in 1969 resurrecting Thomas Henry Huxley's theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs; the dino-bird link excites a new generation of researchers to reinvigorate a fossilized, er, moribund field. Sinosauropteryx has a "Mohican" of ginger-colored feathers running along its head and back, along with a striped tail. The 29.5 ft.-long crocodile-faced Baryonyx-like Horned hell heron (Ceratosuchops inferodios) and Riverbank hunter (Riparovenator milnerae) live on the Isle of Wight, becoming ancestors of the Spinosaurus. The oldest discovered fossil of a marsupial (two vaginas) is Sinodelphys szalayi in Lianoning, China. The oldest discovered fossil of a placental mammal is a dormouse-like creature called Eomaia, found in China. The Mesangiosperms emerge, becoming the common ancestor (clade) for angiosperms. Lice become parasitic, starting with birds with feathers.
-123,000,000 The chipmunk-like mammal Maotherium (Chin. "Mao's beast") asiaticus in NE China has microscopic ear bones that are precursors to the human middle ear?
-121,000,000 T-Rex-sized 34-ft.-long spinosaur Suchomimus (Gk. "crocodile mimic") tenerensis lives in the lush Sahara; discovered by Paul Sereno.
-120,000,000 India begans to move N, causing Gondwana to break into three pieces: South Am./Africa, India, Australia/Antarctica; Madagascar made a gash scar, er, separates from Africa. The order Coxoplectoptera (Gk. "chimera wings") emerges in Brazil, with insect "Frankensteins" that have the wings and middle-body segments of a dragonfly, wing veins like a mayfly, and forelegs like a praying mantis. 2-legged bipedal crocodiles in South Korea?
-119,000,000 Minmi paravertabra is a 10-ft.-long armored plant-eater living in Australia. Hylaeosaurus becomes extinct.
-116,000,000 All 48 bird species lose their teeth.
-115,000,000 38-ft.-long bipedal predator theropod dinosaur Acrocanthosaurus ("high-spine lizard") of North Am. has spikes growing out of its spine, and is a favorite candidate for a B-horror flick. The Omineca Episode ends. A placental mammal is found in Australia.
-113,000,000 Carnivore therapod Scipionyx lives in Italy.
-112,000,000 Supercrocodile Sarchosuchus imperator (Gk. "flesh crocodile") lives in the Sahara Jungle (modern-day Sahara Desert) in modern-day Niger, Africa, and reaches a length of 37-40 ft. in 50-60 years, and a weight of 8 tons.
-110,000,000 Giraffe-like Sauroposeidon ("lizard Poseidon") in Okla.-Tex. is the largest creature ever to walk the Earth, reaching 56 ft. in height, 98 ft. in length, and 60 tons in weight; the four neck vertebra discovered in 1994 by U. of Okla. paleontologist Richard Cifelli (1954-) are up to 10 ft. long each, and were first thought to be tree trunks. The heavily-armored 5.5m herbivore Nodosaur uses red-white camouflage for more protection. The Leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) appears, becoming the Earth's 4th largest reptile in modern times behind three crocodilians; they breed in the tropics and feed in the frigid waters of Canada. Brontomerus mcintoshi is a "thunder-thighs" dino that lives in Utah and uses its powerful thigh muscles to kick predators.
-108,000,000 Crow-sized Aquilops ameicanus lives in Carbon County, Mont., becoming the earliest known horned dino in North Am.; discovered in 1997 by Scott Madsen.
-103,000,000 Koreaceratops hwaseongensis lives in modern-day Hwaseong City, South Korea, becoming its first known horned dinosaur, with tall neural spines on its caudal vertabrae
-102,000,000 100+-ft.-long 50+-ton Patagotian lives in Patagonia, Argentina, becoming the largest known dinosaur.
-100,000,000 South Am. and Africa separate - oh baby, we gotta go? The Sahara becomes the most dangerous place in Earth's history? The Trans-Saharan Seaway arises, covering most of West Africa (ends -50M). 46-ft.-long, 8-ton Giganotosaurus carolinii is the largest carnivorous dinosaur ever; discovered in Neuquen, Patagonia, Argentina in 1995. 50-ft.-long herbivore sauropod Aegyptosaurus (Gk. "Egyptian lizard") lives in Egypt, Niger, and the modern-day Sahara Desert in Africa; discovered in 1932 by German paleontologist Baron Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach (1871-1951). Carnivorous Carcharodontosaurus lives in Africa. The egg-laying monotremes diverge from the mammals, who begin to radiate like crazy into 4K species in the next 20M years . The fly Cascoplecia insolitis lives in the Hukawng Valley of Burma (Myanmar), and has a horn at the center - could it be its forehead is topped with three tiny eyes? Spider crabs live in reefs in N Spain. 2-in. x 1 in. bird tracks are discovered in the Kosong coastal region of SE South Korea 204 mi. SE of Seoul in 1990 by Martin G. Lockley (1952-) and Seong-Young Yang. The oldest record of a bee with pollen. Saturn's icy moons are born about this time, along with its rings? The oldest known animal sperm is found trapped in amber from small ostracods; it measures one-third of the body length. The antiosperm flowering species Valviloculus pleristaminis is trapped in amber in modern-day N Myanmar; the male flowers are 2mm across, with 50 stamens arranged in a spiral and anthers pointing upward; discovered in 2020 by paleobiologist George Poinar J.
-99,000,000 The island continent of Laramidia in N North Am. (ends -66M) is formed by the Western Interior Seaway and Hudson Seaway. Zhuchengtyrannus magnus, T-Rex's cousin lives near Zhucheng, Shandong, China. The oldest known baby snake in amber is a Xiaophis myanmarensis in Myanmar. The oldest known pollen is found in a tumbling flower beetle preserved in amber by Chinese grad student Tong Bao.
-98,000,000 Siats lives in Utah, beocming the 2nd largest carnivorous dino after T-Rex; their dominance kept the T-Rex from evolving for millions of years?
-97,000,000 Zac lives in Queensland, Australia; discovered in 2009 in Eromanga. The ancestor of Schizodactylidae (splay-footed cricket) lives in NE Brazil.
-96,000,000 Fossil pollen dating to this era helps explain the genesis of flowering plants? The crocodile Terminonaris lives in Tex.; its snout is 2 ft. long and 7 in. wide.
-95,000,000 The 50cm snake Eupodophis descouensi of Lebanon has a small 2cm leg attached to its pelvis.
-93,000,000 Auilolamna milarcae (Gk. "eagle shark") is a combo shark and ray that lives in N Mexico.
-90,000,000 Madagascar separates from India. There are rainforests near the South Pole. The 300+-species pouch-carrying marsupials (Metatherians) infraclass diverge from the Therian mammals in Laurasia and spread S to Gondwana, South Am., Antarctica, and Australia; by modern times most species live in active volcano-free Australia. Morocco is the home to 45-ft.-long shark-toothed Carcharodontosaurus saharicus, the largest land carnivore ever, and 27-ft.-long Deltadromeus agilis - discovered by the Paul Sereno expedition in 1995. Kalligrammatid lacewing (Order Neuroptera) emerges in NE China, with the same appearance as butterflies (Order Lipidoptera), only 50M years earlier. Horse-size Timurlengia euotica in the Kyzylkum Desert in Uzbekistan has a sophisticated brain with keen eyesight, smell, and hearing; discoveed by Am. paleontologist Stephen L. Brusatte et al. of the U. of Edinburgh.
-89,000,000 The earliest known Pteranodon flying reptile lives in Tex.
-85,000,000 The 1.9M sq. mi. continent of Zealandia separates from Gondwana; in -50M it begins a dramatic elevation process (ends -35M, contributing to the formation of the Ring of Fire in the W Pacific. The Niobrara Sea (Formation) (Chalk) in C North Am., incl. Kan. and S.D. is home to the 13.5-ft.-long sea turtle Archelon (Gk. "ruler turtle"), sharks, etc. Turkey-sized Velociraptor (Gk. "swift robber") romps and chomps through the swamp in Mongolia. Protoceratops (Gk. "first horned face") in Mongolia has a parrot-like beak and is a herding herbivore, as is its rhino-like 20-ft.-long 5-ton charging cousin Pentaceratops (Gk. "5-horned face") of North Am.
-84,000,000 Earth's crust tilts on its side and back again in a "cosmic yo-yo". Parrot-sized 1-fingered Linhenykus monodactylus lives in Mongolia and China.
-83,000,000 The Campanian Age of the late Cretaceous Epoch begins (ends -72M); 40-ft.-long 13-ton Titanosaurus (Gk. "titanic lizard"), first found in Colo. by Othniel Charles Marsh (1832-99) is the biggest dino of all - how big are the doodoo piles?
-81,000,000 The 3.6K-mi. Pacific Ocean Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain of volcanoes rises from the Hawaiian hotspot, which is located far from tectonic plate boundaries.
-80,000,000 The Anti-Atlas Mts. in modern-day Morocco are formed by the collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates, destroying the Tethys Ocean. Eggs of 40-ft.-long Hypselosaurus priscus ("high ridge lizard") are found near Aix-en-Provence, France in Oct. 1961; they are 12 in long, 10 in. dia., with a capacity of 7 pints (3.3 liters) (more than twice the size of ostrich eggs). The appendix evolves in Australian marsupials incl. the wombat to fight disease?; too bad, Charles Darwin later calls it a vestigial organ from an ancestor that ate leaves, causing physicians to routinely remove it when it gets inflamed.
-76,700,000 Duck-billed dino Maiasaura (Gk. "caring mother lizard") lives in Mont.; discovered in 1978; in 1982 Am. paleontologist John R. "Jack" Horner (1946-) discovers evidence of parental care in the fossils, becoming the first known motherly dino.
-76,000,000 13-20 ft. long, 6 ft. tall Gallimimus runs like an ostrich. Parasaurolophus (Gk. "near-crested lizard") of North Am. (Alberta, N.M., Utah) is a long-crested duck-billed herbivore. Is 13-ft.-long herbivore Thescelosaurus (Gk. "marvelous lizard") of North Am. (with a 4-chambered heart) warm-blooded? 23-ft.-long Therizinosaurus (Gk. "reaper lizard") lives in the area of the modern-day Gobi Desert and has the largest finger bones in history? Rhino-like 26-ft.-long Chasmosaurus (North Am.) is the oldest long-frilled dinosaur, the most widely distributed ceratopsian, and one of the last dinos to appear. 15-ft-.long 2.5 ton Kosmoceratops and 18-to-22-ft.-long 3-4 ton Utahceratops live in the continent of Laramidia. 6-ft.-long theropod dinosaur Dromaeosaurus (Gk. running lizard") makes a nice snack for Albertosaurii - can't eat just one? 3-ft.-long 100-lb. fast-moving carnivore Troodon (Gk. "wounding tooth") (formerly the sauronithoidids) of North Am. is the smartest dinosaur in history, with the highest brain-to-body size ratio of all non-avian dinosaurs?; discovered in 1855.
-75,000,000 A pregnant turtle dating to this era is found in S Utah. The 18-in.-tall Halszkaraptor Escuilliei looks like a cross between a crocodile and a duck, with flippers like a penguin; it can swim, and walks like an ostrich. Xenu, dictator for 80T years of the Galactic Confederacy (26 stars, 76 planets) brings billions of his people to guess where, Teegeeack, er, Earth, in a DC-8-like spacecraft, stacks them around volcanoes and kills them with H-bombs, their essences (souls?) remaining to mess with people in modern times, all according to sci-fi, er, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
-74,000,000 A comet/asteroid impacts, causing the 22-mi.-wide Manson Crater in Manson, Iowa; it isn't big enough to do the dinosaurs in, but just wait? Titanoceratops ("titanic horn face") lives in the SW U.S., becoming the ancestor of the Triceratops and Torosaurus.
-73,000,000 30-to-43-ft.-long 3.5-ton hadrosaurid (duckbilled) (with mitten hands) Edmontosaurus, discovered in 1917 in Alberta, Canada is a virtually defenseless dino most probably preyed on by T-Rex?; in 1999 a specimen with its skin intact is discovered in Marmarth, N.D.
-72,000,000 The Maastrichtian Age of the Late Cretaceous Epoch begins (ends -66M). 25-ft.-long bipedal theropod dinosaur Carnotaurus (Gk. "carno" + "taurus" = meat-eating + bull) sastrei with bull-like horns emerges in South Am. 2-horned 22-ft.-long Coahuilaceropts magnacuerna appears in Coahuila, S Mexico. Two-legged birdlike oviraptosaur Tongtianlong limosus (Gk. "muddy dragon on the road to heaven") emerges in Ganzhou, S China, with bone crests on their heads used for sexual attraction and intimidation, diversifying into new species before the big asteroid impact of -66M.
-71,000,000 The worldwide Maastrichtian Layer (ends -65 m.y.a.) is home to the aquatic Mosasaur (Gk. "Meuse River lizard") (Gavialimimus almaghribensis), the T-Rex of the sea, living in the waters of modern-day Morocco; discovered in 1764 in Maastricht, Netherlands on the Meuse River; it has a crocodile-like snout for grabbing fish.
-70,000,000 The Earth day lasts 23.5 hours; the year has 372 days. Alioramus (Gk. "different branch"), an 8-horned "ballerina" relative of T-Rex lives in Mongolia; discovered in 1976 by Soviet paleontologist Sergei Mikhailovich Kurzanov (1947-); in 2001 Am. paleontologist Stephen Louis Brusatte (1984-) discovers the species Alioramus altai, becoming the only known dino with a horn sticking out of each cheek. The small bird-like 5-ft. long oviraptorosaurian (Gk. "egg thief lizard") therapod dinosaur Avimimus (Gk. "bird mimic") lives in Mongolia; announced in 1981 by Sergei Kurzanov. Albertosaurus, a somewhat smaller (30-ft.-long) version of the T-Rex living in W Canada is discovered in 1884 by Canadian geologist Joseph Burr Tyrrell (1858-1957). The 25-ft.-long North Am. herbivore Torosaurus (Gk. "perforated lizard") has the biggest (9 ft.) head of any dino - Ole! 35-ft.-long 4-ft.-tall 8-ft.-wide armored herbivoreAnkylosaurus, (Gk. "fuzed lizard") with an attitude lives in W North Am., and comes complete with tail club and a double row of spikes running from the back of its head to its tail; named in 1908 by Am. paleontologist Barnum "Mr. Bones" Brown (1873-1963). 9-ft.-long Crichtonsaurus (named after novelist Michael Crichton) lives in China. 18-ft.-long big-toothed predatory fish Xiphactinus lives in Argentina. 16-ft.-tall 25-ft.-long 1.5-ton toothless beaked ostrich-like Gigantoraptor erlianensis is unearthed in N China in 2007, going against the trend of dinos to get smaller as they get more birdlike. Majungasaurus crenatissimus in Madagscar sheds and replaces its teeth like a shark about every 2 mo. Dinosaurs live in the Arctic.
-68,000,000 3-horned 30-ft.-long herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur Triceratops (Gk. "tri" + "keras" + "ops" + three-horned face emerges in North Am., becoming one of the last known non-avian dinosaur genera; its head is one-third the length of its entire body. 40-ft.-long Tyrannosaurus Rex (T-Rex) (Gk. "tyrant lizard"), a hunter not scavenger is one of the last dinos to come along in Jurassic Park, incl. Sue (dated to -67M), discovered in 1990 by Am. paleontologist Susan "Sue" Hendrickson (1949-) in the Black Hills of S.D., and auctioned to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Ill. in Oct. 1997 for $7.6M, becoming item #PR 2081; she died from trichomoniasis?; the T-Rex is cannibalistic? - last to come to Jurassic Park, but sells all the tickets? The beaked toothless long-clawed crested bird-like (wishbone) Oviraptosaurs emerge from the therapods; discovered in S.D. in 2002. Giant toothless pterosaur (up to 12m wingspan) Quetzalcoatlus (named for the Aztec feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl) is the largest known flying creature, weighing only 200 lb. max; discovered in Big Bend Nat. Park in Tex. in 1971 by Am. geologist-paleontologist Douglas A. Lawson (1947-).
-67,000,000 The Earth's atmosphere is 35% oxygen. A duck-billed dino or hadrosaur fossil is found on Vega Island in Antarctica in 1998, indicating a land bridge with the South Am. Dineobellator notohesperus (Lat. "Navajo warrior from the Southwest") lives in New Mexico, with feathers and flailing tail becoming the last of the raptors. Did the T-Rex come along in this million-year stretch or the previous one? - tired of another sleepless night?
-66,000,000 Housecat-sized Didelphodon (Gk. "2-womb tooth") is the largest mammal living during the Age of the Dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are facing extinction even before the big asteroid strike?; or were they flourishing and all died in a sudden flood at the K-Pg boundary? The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) Extinction Event sees a 1T-ton 6-mi.-dia. asteroid or smaller comet impact in the area of Chicxulub, Mexico, apparently causing the 5th worldwide (2nd largest) mass-extinction (75% of all species), leaving the K-PG (Cretaceous-Paleogene) Boundary, a thin layer of sediment with high levels of iridium; too bad, the Chicxulub crater lacks iridium; the 24km diam. Boltysh Crater in Ukraine happens several thousand years earlier?; at first sulfur chokes the atmosphere and blocks the Sun for years or decades, causing land temps to plummet by 28C (50F), after which increased CO2 levels cause global warming by 5C (9F) for 100K-300K years?; the dinosaurs are wiped out, along with many primitive species of Cretaceous birds, allowing the mammals to inherit the Earth, rapidly increasing their max size from 10kg to 17 tons, a factor of 1Kx; the ammonites become extinct; plankton and small wormlike creatures recover in the silty crater seafloor within a few years; birds have to rediscover how to fly after only flightless emu-like species survive; mixotrophs, which can consume organic matter in the absence of sunlight help smaller organisms survive?; the mass exinction of the dinos was really caused by the Earth traveling through a thin disk of dark matter running through the Galaxy?; in 1978 Am. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Walter Alvarez (1911-88), his geologist son Walter Alvarez (1940-) et al. propose the Asteroid Impact Theory of Dinosaur Extinction to explain the unusual abundance of iridium associated with the K-T Extinction Boundary (65M B.C.E.); 1990 studies of the impact crater of Chicxulub in the Gulf of Mexico lend support to their theory; paleontologists go on to dispute it, only to be shut out and shut down by a conspiracy of global warming environmentalists secretly run by well-connected Alvarez, who calls them "not very good scientists... more like stamp collectors"?; Paul Ekman (1954-) and long-term climate change kills off the dinosaurs, not a rogue asteroid, according to German paleontologist Michael Prauss; the precise date is 66,038,000 B.C.E.; the decline of plant-eating dinosaur species in the last few million years is what doomed them? Herbivorous Simosuchus ("pug-nosed crocodile") lives in Madagascar; discovered in 2000. Within 400K years rat-sized placental Protungulatum donnae emerges in North Am., becoming the ancestor of all placental mammals, which branch into 5.4K modern-day species?
-65,000,000 Map of the continents. The Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era (begun -144M) ends, and the Paleocene (Palaeocene) ("old recent") Subperiod (Epoch) of the Tertiary Period of the Cenozoic Era (Age of Mammals) begins (ends -56M); the other subperiods are Eocene ("dawn new"), Oligocene ("few new"), Miocene ("less new"), and Pliocene ("more new") - pee on Moe? The Earth's atmosphere goes from 35% to 21% oxygen. The Laramide Orogeny begins, producing the Rocky Mountains. The 1.5K-mi.-long 137-strong Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands, riding on the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain begin to be formed by a chain of volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire; despite not being in an earthquake zone, the accretion of material on top of volcanoes causes regular collapses which generate earthquakes; the Hawaiian coastline is 750 mi. (1,210km) long, 4th longest in the U.S. after Alaska, Fla., and Calif. - giving a visit to paradise a caffeine edge? The Teleostei (Gk. "teleos" + "osteon" = complete + bone) order of the bony fishes (the most modern, comprising 95% of modern-day fish) appears. The Great Bird Explosion begins, proliferating the Aves class into 23 orders, 142 families, 2,057 genera, and 9,702 species within 6M years. Primitive mammals begin their great development; the first primates appear. Pines, palms, and cacti appear.
-64,800,000 Primate precursor Plesiadapiformes (Gk. "adapid-like") appears. A thigh bone of a plant-eating hadrosaur is discovered in N.M., indicating that dinosaurs lived 700K years after the big asteroid impact?
-63,000,000 The Order Haplorrhini (Haplorhini) (Gk. "simple nosed"), primate ancestors of tarsiers and simians incl. humans appear after losing the GULOP (gulnolactone oxidase pseudogene) responsible for manufacture of Vitamin C from glucose.
-62,500,000 Human-sized penguin Kupoupou stilwelli lives in the Chatham Islands near South Island, New Zealand (until -60M).
-62,000,000 Human-sized penguin Kupoupou stilwelli lives in the Chatham Islands near South Island, New Zealand (until -60M). The marten or civet-like Miacids (ancestors of mammalian carnivores) appear, along with Mustelidae (weasels). The meat-eating flightless 10-ft.-tall Phorusracid (Terror Bird) emerges in South America (until -1.8M).
-60,000,000 Laurasia splits into North Am., Greenland and Eurasia. The Iceland Plume causes lava flow across Scotland, Ireland, and Greenland, creating Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and Fingal's Cave in Scotland. The largest mammals are the size of modern-day pigs; the Rat and the Bat and the Eohippus appear, along with venomous snakesrats and bats and eohippi and snakes, oh my? The 42-ft.-long 2,500 lb. Titanoboa lives in La Guajira in NE Colombia; found in the Cerrejon Formation. Mahogany trees arise. The water-loving hippo-like family Anthracotheriidae appears, then blossoms over the next 40M years into 37+ distinct genera on all continents except Oceania and South Am., and die out by -2.5M, leaving only one descendant, the hippopotamus? Perturbations in the Earth's orbit caused by asteroids Ceres and Vesta make it impossible to determine Earth's eccentricity (which affects climatic variations on the surface) before this point.
The Paleocene Period of the Tertiary Period ends, and the Eocene Epoch of the Tertiary Period begins (ends -33.9M); Africa, Saudi Arabia, and India separate from and begin colliding with the Eurasian continent, raising the Rockies, Andes, and Alps; the Eurasian Plate crumples and overrides the Indian Plate, creating the Himalayas ("abode of snows"); Mount Everest forms; Antarctica breaks away from Australia, opening the Greenland-Norwegian Sea; Australia ends up as the continent with the smallest distance between its high and low points (7.5K ft.), as well as the highest low point and the lowest high point; air masses forced over the Himalayas to the E become bone dry, creating the Gobi Desert, and the Great Loess (Huangtu) Plateau of C China, which later becomes the center of Chinese rice production. The Iceland Plume erupts again, lifting the sea floor between Greenland and Europe into the air and creating a land bridge, while magma bleeds through sediments and forms horizontal sheets known as shills that generate methane and CO2 gas that bubbles into the ocean, helping trigger the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)?; a volcano in Scotland is as big as the 1883 Krakatoa eruption.
-55,500,000 The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) sees global sea surface temps rise 5C-8C (11F) (from 3C to 8C-11C) for 200K years and sea temps reach 20C because of degassing methane ice deposits (clathrates) lasting 20K years, causing mass extinctions of foraminifera, allowing plankton to migrate to higher latitudes along with land animals and plants; the avg. temp. at the North Pole is 23C (74 F), with alligator ancestors and palm trees caused by a greenhouse effect?; mammals begin to proliterate; the warming was caused by massive release of mostly volcanic greenhouse gases, which was still slow enough for negative feedbacks to mitigate ocean acidification?
-55,000,000 The Arctic region around the North Pole is subtropical, with surface sea temps of 23C (73F) (until -49M). Angiosperm herbs and trees with fruit, and grasses appear; associated with this is a significant increase in the diversity of birds and insects (cabbage-sized mosquitoes?). Mammals spread from Eurasia to Africa and India. Archicebus achilles lives in China (-55.8 to -54.8), becoming the earliest complete skeleton of a primate to be discovered. Nails appear on all fingers and toes in primates. Dog-sized Hyracotherium, AKA Eophippus or Dawn Horse ranges throughout North Am., Europe and Asia. The Calif. River (as big as the modern Colo. River) flows from the Mojave region of S Calif. through Ariz. into Utah in the opposite direction. Appearance of the earliest Ungulates (hoofed mammals), incl. Macrauchenia (Gk. "long big neck") (deer, camel) on land; the Proboscideans (long snouts) appear; the Whales diverge from even-toed ungulates (sheep, cows, pigs, camels, deer, hippos) in the Indian Subcontinent (S Asia), and take to the sea, along with the meat-eating sea serpent and the official Alabama state fossil, the Zeuglodon (Basilosaurus); the small-toothed white beluga whale is the only whale that can bend its neck. The lemur appears in Madagascar.
-53,000,000 The evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest U.S. emerge during a time of a subtropical climate like modern-day S Fla., with the highest-known global temps in the last 66M years. The original size doesn't matter? Bugsize shrew-like Batodonoides is the smallest mammal of all time?
-52,000,000 Onychonycteris, AKA "the clawed bat" lives in Wyo., and has wings but no sonar equipment, plus claws on each of its five fingers; found in 2003 by Bonnie Finney.
-50,000,000 Another mass extinction occurs, incl. Paleodictyon nodosum. Crocodiles lose to mammals in the domination race - or else Raquel Welch would have had big teeth? Mountains begin rising in S British Columbia, sweeping S as far as Mexico and E as far as Neb. over the next 22M years. About this time Wadi El Hitan (Al-Hitan) (Arab. "Whale Valley) (90 mi. SW of modern-day Cairo), part of a shallow valley becomes the scene for the transition of whales from land to sea mammals? 45-ft.-long great shark Carcharodon megalodon is the largest fish in prehistoric times. Pakicetus, discovered in 1983 is the earliest known cetacean. Kinkajous (Honey Bears) (genus Potos) diverge from the Procyonids (raccoons). Attine ants appear, farming funguses. Single-stranded DNA viruses develop?
-49,000,000 The ocean around the North Pole is closed off by the continents, creating a freshwater sea at about 10C (50F); breadfruit trees and crocodiles thrive on the shores of the Arctic Ocean; too bad, low salinity causes the Azolla Event, when azolla (mosquito)) (duckweed) (water) ferns (fairy moss) multiply, consuming the carbon dioxide and cooling it down?
-48,000,000 Raccoon-sized even-toed ungulate Indohyus, a cross between a long-tailed deer and long-legged oversize rat lives in Kashmir, India; the missing link between 4-legged land animals and whales, according to Hans Thewissen of the U. of NE Ohio. Human settlements at 2km alt. in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. C-14 radiocarbon dating is limited to this age.
-47,000,000 The 3-ft.-high lemur-like primate Darwinius massilae (named after the 200th anniv. of Darwin's birth in 1809, plus the place it was found), unearthed in 1983 in the Messel Pit near Darmstadt, Germany and unveiled to the public on May 19, 2009 with the nickname Ida after two years of secret study by Norwegian paleontologist Jorn (Jörn) Harald Hurum (1967-) of Oslo U., named after his 6-y.-o daughter, is billed as the missing link between apes and monkeys, incl. humans; too bad, later in 2009 Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook U. in N.Y. proves that it is an evolutionary dead end with no connection - boy if he could talk?
-46,200,000 The herbivorous Protoceratids of North Am. have a slingshot-shaped horn on their nose.
-45,000,000 Africa is formed by a single giant magma plume. The Yangtze River in China (3rd longest in modern times) begins to cut the Three Gorges area. Andrewsarchus (wolflike mammal) appears in Inner Mongolia; discovered in 1923. Eosimias, the earliest known primate lives in China; discovered in 1999 in S Jiangsu Province.
-44,000,000 The island continent of Balkanatolia arises, lasting for 10M years until the end of the Eocene Epoch.
-43,000,000 The Pacific Plate begins turning NW. A 13-ft.-long (4m) 4-legged walking whale lives in Peru 1km inland from Playa Media Luna on the Pacific coast.
The oldest rodent fossils in South Am. come from the Ucayli River near Contamana, Peru.
-40,000,000 The modern continents form. The avg. global temp is 88F (31C) due to high CO2 levels of 900-1K ppm. A shallow sea covers N Africa (part of the Tethys Sea), featuring whales, whose skeletons are found in modern times. The Alps are formed, merging with the Carpathian Mts. on the NE, the Jura Mts. on the W, the Apennines on the S, and becoming divided into three main ranges, the Western Alps (Maritime, Ligurian, Cottian, Dauphine, Graian, and Savoy Alps) from the Mediterranean Sea N to the Great St. Bernard Pass (8,111 ft.), the Central Alps (Bernese, Pennine, Lepontine, Rhaetian or Swiss Alps) (from St. Bernard Pass E to Brenner Pass) (highest peak 13,462-ft. Barre des Ecrines), and the Eastern Alps (Noric Alps, Hohe Tauern, Carnic Alps, Dolomites, Julian Alps, Karawanken, Dinaric Alps) (Brenner Pass NW to Austria and SE to Yugoslavia) (highest peak 12,461-ft. Gross Glockner in Austria); the Pennine Alps contain the 14,780-ft. Matterhorn (Mont Cervin); the Bernese Alps contain 13,040-ft. Mt. Eiger; the St. Gotthard Range in the Leopontine Alps contain the sources of the Rhine, Reuss and Ticino Rivers. Modern birds, incl. penguins appear. butterflies appear. The herbivorous Hyrax (Gk. "shrewmouse") (order Hyracoidea) (closest living relative to the elephant?) appears in Africa and the Middle East; later when the Phoenicians discover the Iberian Peninsula, they confuse rabbits with hyraxes and name it I-Shapan-im ("land of the hyraxes"), becoming Hispania. New World monkeys diverge from the primates. The Pestera cu Oase ("cave with the bones") in Romania is the home of Neanderthals that mate with humans. A land bridge reaches from South Am. through Antarctica to Australia, through which the beech tree spreads - the original beechwood aged? Roses appear.
-38,000,000 The Late Eocene Epoch sees tropical jungles in the Am. Midwest and temperate forests in the Antarctic.
-37,000,000 Le Grand Coupure (The Great Cut) (Eocene-Oligocene Extinction Event), a dramatic change in weather from wet and tropical to seasonal and subtropical, plus expansion of grasslands occurs. Appearance of the Hylobatidae family, incl. the Gibbons (Lesser or Smaller Apes). Knuckle-walking Chalicothere (ancestor of horses, tapirs, rhinos) appears - the panda bear of the Oligocene? The rhinolike mammal Baluchitherium ppears. Canines and felines begin to diverge from the carnivore superfamily and branch into two separate families; wolf-like Hesperocyon gregarius is a proto-canid; sabertooth cat-like Dinictis (false saber-toothed cats) of North Am. is a proto-feline; the domestication process of dogs begins with wolves in the Franconian Alps?
-36,000,000 Paleomastodon appears in N Africa, becoming ancestors of mastodons and/or elephants. Squirrels (Gk. "skiouros" = shadow-tailed) (monochromatic but able to focus throughout their field of vision?) emerge in W North Am. The 5 ft. (1.5m) tall red-brown Inkayacu paracasensis (Water King) penguin lives on the coast of Peru.
-35,500,000 Two asteroids or comets collide with the Earth, the first producing a 50-mi.-dia. crater under Chesapeake Bay, the second producing a 60-mi.-dia. crater near Popigai, E of the Ural Mountains in N Siberia.
-35,000,000 Aegicetus gehennae in Egypt is an ancestor of the whale that swims with an undulatory motion like a crocodile. Old World Monkeys diverge from New World Monkeys.
-34,000,000 There is a worldwide mass-extinction of shellfish in the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary. A "lost extinction" in Africa wipes out the majority of the primates, rodents, and carnivores over millions of years.
-33,900,000 The Eocene Epoch of the Tertiary Period ends (begun -56M0, and the Oligocene Epoch of the Tertiary Period begins (ends -23M); Africa and India squeeze together with Europe; the zeuglodon becomes extinct, except at Loch Ness? :) The tropical climate of the Eocene gives way to a global expansion of grasslands, and a regression of tropical broadleaf forests to the equatorial belt.
-33,600,000 The Antarctic Polar Ice Sheet (Ice Cap) dates to this time.
-33,500,000 The Grande Coupure (Fr. "great break") sees a major turnover in European mammalian fauna in favor of Asian species, resulting in geographic speciation in small isolated relictual pops.
-33,000,000 About -33M to -28M the cetaceans separate into Mysticeti (baleen whales incl. right and bowhead whales) and Odontoceti (toothed whales incl. beaked whales, sperm whales, killer whales, vaquita, dolphins, and porpoises), which develop animal echolocation.
-30,000,000 A rotational shift moves North Am. closer to the North Pole; the 1K km Bering Land Bridge opens, creating 620K sq. mi. (1.6M sq. km) Beringia, bounded by the Lena River in Russia on the W, the Mackenzie River in Canada on the E, the Chukchi Sea in the N, and the Kamchatka Peninsula in the S. The Indricothere (Indrichotherium) emerges in the rainforests of Kazakhstan, Pakistan, SW China, and C Asia, becoming the largest land mammal ever; too bad, the Himalayan uplift causes their habitats to disappear, leading to their extinction. The Bear and Raccoon families diverge. The Woodpecker (Picidae family) emerges, incl. the Wrynecks (genus Jynx) of Europe, the tree-killing Sapsuckers (genus Sphyrapicus) of North Am., and the Piculets of South Am., Asia, and Africa. The 5 ft. Hanzaki Giant Japanese Salamander (Jap. "Osanshouo" = giant pepper fish) (Andrias japonicus) emerges, maintaining its same skeletal structure to modern times and becoming the 2nd largest salamander on Earth after the Chinese giant salamander.
-29,000,000 Dinohyus (Gk. "terrible pig") (AKA Daeodon from Gk. "dreadful teeth") appears in North Am. The primate Saadanius hijazensis lives near Mecca in W Arabia, and is closely related to the catarrhines, common ancestor of the Old World monkeys and apes; discovered in 2009 by researchers from the U. of Mich., it rolls forward by millions of years the date when Old World monkeys and apes diverge.
-27,000,000 8-ft.-tall carnivorous bird Phorusrhacos lives in Patagonia, South Am.; discovered in 1887 by Argentine paleontologist brothers Florentino Ameghino (1854-1911) and Carlos Ciriaco Ameghino (1865-1936).
-25,000,000 1 mi.-deep Lake Baikal is formed, containing 20% of the world's fresh water. Marsupials become extinct in North Am., but dominate South Am. The first civet-like Cats appear. The Macaque diverges from the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. Dwarf whale Mammalodon lives by sucking small animals up from seafloor mud, becoming the ancestor of modern-day blue whales. 330-lb. Mukupirna nambensis lives near Lake Pinpa E of the Flinders Range of South Australia, becoming the largest known wombat; discovered in 1973.
-24,000,000 The Oligocene Epoch of the Tertiary Period ends, and the Miocene Epoch (Gk. "less new") of the Tertiary Period begins (ends -5.3M); grasslands and kelp forests become widespread and associated with the diversification of grazing animals; mammals begin to acquire modern characteristics; diatoms are plentifully preserved from this age. A renewed uplift of the Rockies and other mountains brings great lava flows in the W U.S. Antarctica becomes isolated, and the circumpolar circulation is established; the Antarctic polar cap is formed, causing marsupials to become extinct there. The Great Apes (Pongidae) emerge and begin to radiate into gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans; they like nosepicking? Dinotherium (Gk. "terrible beast") (related to the modern elephant) appears, along with Mastodons (Gk. "breast tooth") (which have two sets of tusks) in North Am. and Central Am. (until -10K). Hyena-like Megistotherium (Gk. "great beast bone-crusher") appears in Africa (named in 1973 by Robert Savage), along with hyena-like omnivorous canine Cynodesmus, the ancestor of the Canidae family (modern wolf, fox, and dog). The 40-100-ft.-long shark-like Megalodon (Gk. "big tooth") has 6.5-in. teeth and likes to eat dwarf whales for a snack, until they eat them all, causing it to go extinct?; its tooth becomes the state fossil of N.C. The 43-in.-long web-footed otter-like seal-skulled pinniped Walking Seal (Puijila darwin), discovered in 2009 in the Canadian Arctic is the long-sought missing link between land and sea-based mammals?
-23,000,000 The (hominid?) Proconsul africanus is discovered at Rusinga Island in E Lake Victoria in Kenya in 1948 by Kenyan anthropologist Louis Leakey (1903-72); it becomes extinct about -5M.
-22,500,000 The Diatomys family of rodents lives in Thailand, Pakistan, China, and Japan (until -11M).
-21,000,000 Panamacebus transitus is the first monkey known to have lived on the North Am. continent before the Isthmus of Panama connects it to South Am.
-20,000,000 The Kerguelen Plateau is submerged in the S Indian Ocean 3K km SW of Australia. The first neural speech pathway appears in macaques? Bears and Tapirs appear. A "genetic capacitor" discharges, setting the stage of sexual differentiation in mammals?
-18,500,000 Beings from Venus land on Earth to help man-animals evolve into humans?
-18,000,000 The Miocene Climatic Optimum begins (ends -16M). The W half of the Grand Canyon begins to open from crustal stretching, eroding at 1-2 in. every 1K years?; the Great Uniformity of the Grand Canyon took more than erosion? - how did the Grand Canyon get dug? Two Jews dropped a penny? Africa collides with Eurasia; squirrels arrive in Africa. The ancestor of the Giant Panda of SC China diverges from the bear family. The Kisingiri Volcano in Kenya, E Africa erupts, killing a community of Proconsuls. The East African Plateau begins to rise. Humans migrate to Swabia?
-16,000,000 About this time an enormous volcano in the Pacific Northwest erupts, covering modern-day Wash., Ore. and Idaho with lava for 750K years, which become the Columbia River Flood Basalts, bringing global warming along with elevated CO2 levels; the Langhian stage of the Miocene Epoch begins (ends -13.65M), continuing the warming period until -14.8M to -14.1M, when a major growth of the East Antarctic ice sheet along with increased production of cold Antarctic deep waters brings cooling along with a wave of extinctions of aquatic and terrestrial life forms.
Kenyapotamus (Gk. "dweller in the river of Kenya"), the earliest known Hippopotamus (Gk. "water horse") first appears in Africa, exploding in pop. in -8M - so how could cetaceans, which appear in -50M come from them?
-15,000,000 About this time the Earth becomes cooler and more arid, but the climate is still very warm, up to 6C (11F) warmer than today, with almost all the ice melting, and CO2 levels as high as modern times; alligators live in England. An asteroid/comet approximately 0.9 mi. in dia. impacts and forms the 15-mi.-wide Ries Crater in Bavaria near Nordlingen. The Andes are formed. The Susquehanna River valleys and their tributaries are formed. About this time the fast weathering of relatively new rocks in the Himalayas captures atmospheric CO2, after which rivers carry dissolved carbon to the oceans, which algae use to build their calcium carbonate shells, falling to the sea floor when they die and locking atmospheric carbon in deep sea sediments; on Sept. 22, 2019 Yair Rosenthal et al. of Rutgers U. pub. the paper Is Theory on Earth's Climate in the Last 15 Million Years Wrong? in Nature Geoscience, finding that rock weathering may not really be responsible for long-term global cooling, and that high CO2 levels doesn't reduce calcium carbonate in algae. Lemuria exists about this time?
-14,000,000 The eastern connection of the Tethys Ocean with the Indian Ocean closes, forming the Mediterranean (Lat. "middle of the Earth") Sea. The most recent common ancestor of the Hominidae (Great Apes) becomes extinct, and the ancestors of the Pongo genus (orangutans) diverge from the Pan (chimpanzees), Gorilla (gorillas), and Homo (humans) genera; Kenyapithecus wickeri makes a crude stone hammer in Kenya, starting a radiation of apes out of Africa to Europe and Asia by -10M that later become extinct; discovered in Ft. Ternan, Kenya by Louis S.B. Leakey in 1968. The Giraffe (Somali "fast walker") (Lat. "camelopardalis" = camel + leopard) begin diverging from the okapi, becoming the tallest modern-day terrestrial animals and largest modern-day ruminants.
-13,000,000 The Peruvian Ica Stones depict Earth as it was in this time period?
-12,500,000 Sivapithecus (Ramapithecus, Bramapithecus) emerges in the Siwalik Hills of India, Nepal, and Pakistan (until -8500), becoming the ancestor of the modern-day orangutans; at first they are thought to be ancestors of humans.
-12,000,000 The Fourth Atlantian (Gk. "daughter of Atlas") Root Race exists about this time? Putorana Plateau in NC Siberia is created by an earthquake. About this time the Earth shifts relative to its spin axis, causing Greenland to move far enough toward the North Pole to kick off the ice age that began about 3.2M B.C.E.? The physetroid whale Leviathan melvillei (named in honor of "Moby Dick" author Herman Melville) reaches 57 ft. in length, with 14 in. sperm whale teeth (longest known). Semi-erect Dryopithecus apes live in Africa, Asia and Europe (until -9M), becoming the ancestor of the lesser apes (gibbons, siamangs) and great apes; the first fossil is found in France in 1856. Hominid primate Anoiapithecus brevirostris, with a "modern" flat short face with high cheek bones, nasal aperture wide at the base, and deep palate is found in the Anola River region in Catalonia, Spain, starting with the fossil named "Lluc" in 2009.
-10,000,000 About this time (-6M?) the North Pole has ice-free summers, and the sea surface temp reaches 4C-9C (39F-48F), with sea levels about 100m higher than today. Monkeys become more common than apes; humans and chimpanzees (bonobos?) diverge about this time, evolving in different directions for 4M years, then get together for a brief fling that produces a 3rd hybrid pop. about -6.3M?; suggested in 2006 by Eric Steven Lander (1957-) et al. of the Broad Inst. of Harvard and Yale - one look at Pres. G.W. Bush and I'll buy it? Tomarctus, ancestor of the Canidae family (modern dog, wolf, jackal) emerges. The common ancestor of apes and humans evolve the ability to laugh. A single amino acid alteration in humans makes them able to metabolize alcohol so that they could digest fermented fallen fruit? The Sierra Nevada mountain range begins to form; 140 mi. x 5-15 mi. Death Valley is formed, containing the driest, lowest and hottest spot in North Am.; the lowest elev. in the W Hemisphere (-282 ft.) is at Badwater Pond; 85 mi. away is 14,505-ft. (4,421m) Mt. Whitney, highest point in the U.S. outside Alaska. Cacti begin to diverge, along with other succulent plant groups. Sandhill cranes begin flying through the Central Flyway in North Am. (through the center of the continent); as of the year 2000 about 400K of the 500K pop. (plus 140 surviving whooping cranes) stop for 6 weeks on the Platte River between Grand Island and Kearny, Neb. (along with 5M-9M ducks and geese, and 150-250 bald eagles), while the remaining 100K migrate through Fla. and Monte Vista, Colo.
-9,700,000 Ape dental remains near the Rhine River in Germany belong to an extinct primate akin to 3.2M-y.-o. Lucy?
-9,000,000 Gorillas appear - in the mist?
-8,000,000 Mount Kinbalu in Borneo is formed, becoming the youngest granitic pluton in modern times. Chimpanzees and humans diverge, according to Robert D. Martin of the Field Museum in 2010. Hippos begin exploding in number and spreading all over the Earth - yawn? Foxes appear. Flightless emu-like 9-ft.-tall 1.1K lb. Dromornis stirtoni (Stirton's Thunder Bird) lives in C Australia, becoming the largest flightless bird discovered through fossil evidence; fossil leg bones are found in Alice Springs, NT, in 1974. Giant 10-ft.-long 1.5K lb. herbivore rodent Phoberomys pattersoni lives in the Orinoco River delta.
-7,200,000 The Messinian Age (Salinity Crisis) begins (ends -5.3M), in which the Mediterranean becomes separated from the Atlantic and becomes shallow, losing 5K ft. of depth, with a retraction of the shores that washes out underground oil and gas with river streams in the Nile Delta, and forms a saltwater sea gorge invading the Nile as far S as Aswan; primates migrate from Africa to S Spain across dry land (Am. Museum of Nat. History); some Atlantic eels, which breed in the Sargasso Sea (S of Bermuda) become separated E of Gibraltar, making that their new breeding ground? - what an eely mess? The hominin species El Graeco AKA Graecopithecus arises in the E Mediterranean incl. Greece, challenging the Out of Africa hypothesis?; the oldest direct ancestor of humans/; the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees?; found in Greece in 1944.
Ahoy, Mister Bond! Where should we put this bookmark of Man in the Great Track of Time? (Find a skull, get your picture taken with it?)
-7,100,000
The Great Rift Valley in E Africa, running through Tanzania (Olduvai Gorge, Laetoli), Kenya (Tugen Hills,
Allia Bay, Kanapoi, Lake Turkana), Ethiopia (Awash River, Aramis, Hadar) and Djibouti (French Somaliland) in the Horn of Africa is the archeological gold mine for finding
human ancestors, the scientists' Garden of Eden, where apes allegedly fool around with bipedalism and baldness and missionary sex in a multi-million-year lab while making
their own human kind of music; funny how it all washes into the Red Sea ("Adam" means red in Hebrew) and the Gulf of Aden (Eden)?
-7,000,000 The forested land bridge between Siberia and Alaska closes. Sahelanthropus tchandensis, a hominid (humanlike creature) with a flat face nicknamed Toumai is discovered in Chad in July, 2002 by French anthropologist Michel Brunet (1940-) et al. Humans, chimpanzees and gorillas have a common ancestor who lived about this time, according to DNA analysis (-7M to -5.4M)? - breaking up is so hard to do, one day you'll still be eating bananas and I'll be going to the Moon?
-6,000,000 The Grand Canyon begins to be formed, along with the Colorado River after two canyons join and the dranage system turns into a single river?; it is jump-started by a giant lake that spills over?; it is formed at the rate of 1 in. per cent.? Millennium Man (Orrorin turgenensis) is discovered in the Tugen Hills of Kenya by French scientists Brigitte Senut and Martin Pinkford in Oct.-Nov. 2000. The retrovirus CERV2 infects chimpanzees, and gets absorbed into their genome?
-5,960,000 The Messinian Salinity Crisis sees the channel between the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean closed, becoming known as the Atlantic Dam and Lago Mare.
-5,800,000 The Miocene Epoch of the Tertiary Period ends, and the Pliocene Epoch of the Tertiary Period begins (ends -2.011M); North and South Am. are joined together, and W North Am. is uplifted.
-5,700,000 A bipedal footprint in Crete puts into question the African origin of humans?
-5,600,000 4-ft.-tall chimp-like hominid biped Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba with inch-long toe bones that live in forests in the Middle Awash River 140 mi. NE of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (50 mi. from Hadar) is discovered in 1994 by Los Angeles County, Calif.-born paleoanthropologist Tim D. White (1950-) and his Ethiopian-born UCB anthropology grad student Yohannes Haile-Selassie Ambaye (1961-); "ardi" is Afar (a local language) for basal family ancestor, "ramid" means root, and "Kadabba" means basal family ancestor; they have a grasping opposable big toe; really should be -4.4M B.C.E.?; in 2004 Haile-Selassie, White et al. pub. an article elevating A. kadabba to a species distinct from A. ramidus.
-5,500,000 Pygmy elephants and hippos migrate along the dry E bed of the Mediterranean to riverbeds in modern-day Cyprus; the N rim of the lake later turns into the Pentadaktylos mountain range of N Cyprus? (U. College, London) - where Venus rose from the sea?
-5,330,000 The Gibraltar Dam keeping the Atlantic out of the Mediterranean breaks, causing the Zanclean Flood (Deluge), flooding the Mediterranean desert with 1 mi. of saltwater within 50 years, creating the 40-mi. x 9-24 mi. x 1K ft. deep Strait of Gibraltar, with entrance at the Pillars of Hercules incl. the Rock of Gibraltar (world's most famous rock?) on the S point of the Iberian Peninsula, and Mt. Abila (Abyla) (Sierra Bullones) (Monte Hacho) in Ceuta, N Africa, or Jebel Musa in Morocco, N Africa.
-5,000,000 70 cm-tall 120kg Dinofelis has extra-strong front limbs and giant saber teeth that they use to hunt and eat early Paranthropus hominins (after cracking their skulls) until they hunt them to extinction by -1.2M.
-4,500,000 The Pliocene Warm Period begins (ends -3.5M); the Bering Sea is ice-free and full of life. The great shark Carcharodon megalodon becomes extinct.
-4,400,000 Ardipithecus ramidus ("Ardi") lives in the woodlands of Ethiopia, and has a blend of human and chimplike features, coming in at 4 ft. tall and 110 lbs., able to stand on two legs and climb through trees with opposable big toes; the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, proving that humans didn't descend from chimps, and our mother wasn't as chimpy as had been thought?; discovered in 2009. Ardipithecus ramidus ramidus is discovered in 1994 by U.S. scientist Tim White (1950-) - it would be a black that later beats a white and finds an earlier hominid biped?
-4,200,000 Upright walking hominid species Australopithecus anamensis, part of the genus Australopithecus ("southern ape") is discovered by Bryan Patterson (1909-79) et al. in 1965, and again by Meave Leakey (1942-) et al. in 1994 in Kenya.
-4,000,000 Sheep separate from goats. The mammoth appears in N and E Africa - with 13-ft. tusks and an attitude? The black-footed ferret evolves in Europe from weasel-like ancestors - tell everybody you love the ferret? Cheetahs appear, becoming the oldest of the big cats to survive to modern times - that's why they call me a cheetah? The narrow-striped 5'3"-high Grevy's (Imperial) Zebra (named after French pres. Jules Grevy) (largest of modern-day wild equines) emerges in the Horn of Africa, becoming the 2nd species to emerge from the proto-horses after the asses. Giant 10-ft.-long 2K-lb. (car size) vegetarian rodent Josephoartigasia monesi lives in South Am.; the modern-day 33 lb. 31-in. pacarana (Count Branicki's terrible mouse) is related to it? The first human-like footprints are found in Laetoli, Tanzania.
-3,891,102 A theoretical date marking the beginning of another Maha Yuga (Great Age) (a cycle of 4,320,000 years), and the beginning of the world's most recent Satya (Sat) (Krita) (Krta) Yuga (Golden Age) (Age of Truth) (a cycle of 1,728,000 years).
-3,600,000 Australopithecus bahrelghazali is discovered in 1993 by Michel Brunet in Chad. 5-ft. upright-walking Kadanuumu ("big man") in the Afar region of Ethopia is the great grandfather of 3'6" Lucy?
-3,500,000 The Milky Way explodes, sending a cone-shaped radiation burst through both poles? Kenyanthropus platyops is discovered by Meave Leakey in Aug. 1999 in N Kenya. Lions appear. The Chalicothere disappears. Apes add tropical grasses and sedges to their diets.
-3,400,000 Australopithecus afarensis begins using stone tools to flay meat from bones.
-3,300,000 The Lower Paleolithic (Palaeolithic) division of the Paleolithic (Stone) Age begins (ends -300K); the Lomekwi Site in Kenya contains the oldest known stone tools. A complete skeleton of a 3-y.-o. female Australopithecus afarensis named Selam ("peace") ("Lucy's Child") is discovered in Dikika, NE Ethiopia in 2000; the Nov. 2006 issue of Nat. Geographic depicts its likely face - looks like Bill Gates? Australopithecus deyiremeda (Afar "close relative") is discovered in Mar. 2011 in the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region 35km N of Hadar, Ethiopia, with a more robust lower jaw than Lucy.
-3,200,000 A series of massive supernova explosions near the Solar System begin showering Earth with radiactive debris (ends -1.7M). A skeleton of a tree-dwelling vegetarian 3.5-ft.-tall Australopithecus afarensis (AKA Dinkenesh = "You are amazing"), nicknamed Lucy (AL 288-1) (Dinkinesh) (Amharic "You are marvelous") is discovered in the Awash Valley in the Afar Depression in Hadar, Ethiopia in 1974 by Am. anthropologist Donald Carl Johanson (1943-); it has the skull capacity of an ape along with a locking knee, and can not only walk but run on two legs, and has arched feet; it died in a fall from a tree? - is it straight, bi, or gay?
-3,000,000 The earliest known fossils of the modern genus Equus come from Idaho. Australopithecus africanus (AKA the Taung Baby) lives in South Africa; discovered in 1924 by Raymond Dart (1893-1988).
-2,800,000 The land bridge over the Isthmus of Panama is created, connecting North and South Am. while isolating the Caribbean from the Pacific.
-2,600,000 About this time the Pliocene Epoch of the Tertiary Period ends, and the Pleistocene Epoch (AKA Ice Age) (named by Charles Lyell) of the Quaternary Period begins (ends -9.7K), characterized by cyclic growth and decay of continental ice sheets associated with Milankovitch Cycles; global cooling leads to frequent Ice Ages and glaciers covering more than 25% of the Earth's land surface; the Laurentide Ice Sheet covers North Am. (Canada and the N U.S. as far S as Penn., as far W as the Missouri River, incl. the Great Lakes and the area between the Ohio and Missouri Rivers), reaching 2 mi. thuck in Nunavik, Quebec, Canada, along with volcanoes along the W coast of the U.S., and another glacier from the Rocky Mts. S and E to the Mississippi River as far S as St. Louis, Mo., and more glaciers in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mts. as far S as New Mexico; yet more glaciers cover Scandinavia S and E across N Germany and W Russia and SW over the British Isles; yet another giant glacier covers Siberia; the Yosemite Valley in the Sierra Nevada Mts., Glacier Nat. Park in the Rocky Mts., Bonneville Lake (which shrinks to Great Salt Lake), the Great Lakes, Lake Algonquin, Lake Iroquois, and the Finger Lakes are left when they recede, along with the Red River Valley of Manitoba, left by glacial Lake Agassiz, which drained into Hudson Bay; the 2.5M sq. km Cordilleran Ice Sheet covers North Am. from Mont. and Idaho to British Columbia, Yukon Territory, and Alaska, still covering W Canada by -10.5K, with large areas possibly ice-free as early as -12K?; in Oct. 2019 Maite F. Jansen and Alice Marzocchi pub. the paper Global cooling linked to increased glacial carbon storage via changes in Antarctic sea ice in Nature Geoscience, using the CO2 greenhouse warming theory to claim that an explosion of Antarctic sea ice may have blocked CO2 from being released, causing an ice age. The first mammoths enter North Am. over the Bering land bridge. Paranthropus anthiopicus lives in N Africa; they are a favorite food for big cats. The Oldowan (Olduwan) Hominins in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, discovered in the 1930s by Louis Leakey are the earliest known humans who hunt with pebble stone tools (Mode 1); the tools are used across Africa, South Asia, the Middle East, and Europe until -1.7M. Ronald J. Clarke of the U. of Witwatersrand, South Africa announces in Dec. 1998 the discovery in the Sterkfontein (Afrikaans "strong spring") Caves in Gauteng Province 23 mi. NW of Johannesburg of Little Foot, an australopithecine that becomes one of the best preserved skeletons of an early member of the human family; in 2000 it is declared a World Heritage Site named the Cradle of Humankind. A supernovae exploding 163 l.-y. from Earth touches off lightning storms on earth that cause forest fires in NE Africa, forcing human ancestors to become bipedal to survive in the savannas?
-2,500,000 The Big Bang of the Human Brain begins with the first stone tool technology? 15 species of baleen whales jump in size from 5m-6m to 10m-30m after widely-separated dense food patches in the ocean appear; it really happened about -10M, gradually not suddenly? Australopithecus garhi, discovered in 1997 by Tim White in Ethiopia butchers animals. Paranthropus (Australopithecus) aethiopicus is found in Ethopia in 1967 by French paleontologists Camille Arambourg (1885-1970) and Yves Coppens (1934-); in 1985 Am. anthropologist Alan Walker (1938-) discovers the Black Skull near Lake Turkana in Kenya, which causes the designation of Paranthropus to be questioned. Olduwan stone technology is mankind's first. Modern bears (genus Ursus) appear - not in Africa they don't?
-2,400,000 4-5-ft. tall Homo habilis (Lat. "handy man") (with speech centers in the brain) is discovered in 1960 by Mary Leakey (1913-96) in Tanzania.
-2,330,000 A jaw is found in the Hadar Balands of N Ethiopia in 1996 from a period that might provide an evolutionary link between the ancient ancestors of humans and the apelike Australopithecines.
-2,300,000 The Neogene Period begins (ends -2.58M). Paranthropus boisei AKA Nutcracker Man is discovered at Lake Turkana, Tanganyika by Louis S.B. Leakey in 1959; he actually chewed grass.
-2,200,000 An Eltanin Asteroid between 0.5-2.5 mi. in dia. strikes the Bellingshausen Sea of Antarctica, creating a tsunami with 65-130 ft. waves. A gene mutation found in humans but not in apes occurs, just prior to brain expansion but before humans stand upright - stepbrothers, rated R?
-2,163,102 Theoretical date for the beginning of the world's most recent Treta Yuga (Silver Age) (cycle of 1,296,000 years).
-2,100,000 The Huckleberry Ridge Eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano in Wyo. is the largest of three (-1.3M, -630K).
-2,000,000 Lake Tahoe (Washo "da aw" = the lake) W of modern-day Carson City, Nev. on the Calif.-Nev. border is formed, becoming the largest alpine lake in North Am., and 6th largest by volume after the five Great Lakes, also the 2nd deepest after Crater Lake in Ore. (1,645 ft. vs. 1,949 ft.). Paranthropus (Australopithecus) robustus is discovered in 1938 in South Africa by Robert Broom (1866-1951), along with digging tools. Australopithecus sediba (Sotho for fountain or wellspring) lives in South Africa and might be the missing link; on Apr. 8, 2010 Am. paleoanthropologist Lee R. Berger pub. a report in Science on it. Small-brain Homo naledi lives in Rising Star Case near Johannesburg, South Africa, and is capable of ritual behavior; really lived 330K-230K years ago, contemporary with the appearance of large-brained modern humans, screwing up evolutionary thinkers? Armadillo-like VW Beetle-sized Glyptodon ("grooved tooth") appears in South Am. Smilodon (sabre-toothed tiger or cat) emerges in North Am. - smile-a-ton? Tapirs first appear in South Am. Bison first appear in India and China. The common ancestor of the wolf/coyote appears in North Am. The Tiger emerges. The N tip of Greenland is home to 100+ plant genera, 9 animal taxa incl. the mastodon, plus marine life in a climate 18F-31F warmer than modern-day Greenland.
-1,900,000 5-ft.-tall Homo rudolfensis is discovered in 1971 in Lake Turkana by Richard Leakey et al. Homo ergaster (Gk. "working man") AKA African Homo erectus AKA Narikotome (Turkana) Boy is discovered by Richard Leakey and Alan Walker in 1984, the most complete prehistoric human skeleton yet found - did I evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it? Homo erectus ("upright man") is discovered in Morocco in 1933, and again in 1960 in Olduvai Gorge by Louis Leakey, and again on July 22, 1971 in Tautavel in the E Pyrenees; it becomes extinct in Africa and much of Asia by -500K, but survives to -70K; in 1996 scientists announce that they believe that it survived until Neanderthal times (-50K to -35K) in Ngandong on the Solo River in Indonesia; in 2011 other scientists announce that it was gone by -550K to -143K; in 2020 archeologists in South Africa discover a fossil of homo erectus that is 2.04M-1.95M years old.
-1,810,000 Java Man (Pithecanthropus erectus) is discovered in 1891 by Dutch paleoanthropologist Marie Eugene Francois Thomas Dubois (1858-1940) near Trinil in Java, becoming the first hominid remains to be recognized as proof of human evolution, although it's later debated whether it's really homo erectus, homo sapiens, or a g*ddamned ape; originally called Pithecanthropus erectus ("erect ape-man").
-1,800,000 After the Nubian Swell, a geologic structural uplift going E-W separating the lower Nile River from the Sudan basin causes the Nile River to dry up (until -0.8M), the migration of flora and fauna between Africa and Eurasia via a land bridge in the Levant halts; Homo erectus becomes the first human ancestor to migrate out of Africa; the first wave of human migration (homo erectus) from Africa to Eurasia reaches modern-day Georgia in the Caucasus (next in -1.5M); Homo erectus georgicus is discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia in 2002; all hominids are really one species? The Negev Desert contains the oldest remaining part of the Earth's surface. Megatherium (giant ground sloth) appears.
-1,760,000 The Acheulean (Acheulian) stone tool industry is created by Homo ergaster in Africa.
-1,700,000 The first African migration into Europe is by Homo ergaster? Apelike Zinjanthropus (Australopithecus boisei) is discovered in Tanzania in 1959 by Mary Leakey.
-1,600,000 The Marsupial lion lives in Australia (until -46K), becoming its largest meat-eating mammal, possessing retractable claws, resembling the much smaller Tasmanian Devil with a relatively long neck.
-1,500,000 The second wave of human migration from Africa to Eurasia reaches the Jordan Valley. Australopithecus boisei lives in East Africa; fossil remains are found in Tanganyika in 1959.
-1,300,000 The Mesa Falls Eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano in Wyo. forms the Henry's Fork Caldera in Idaho.
-1,200,000 Pioneer Man (Homo antecessor) lives in Atapuerca in N Spain (until -800K), using stone tools; found in 2007; about 900K is the oldest evidence of cannibalism?
-1,200,000 Homo erectus migrates to China and Java. Paranthropus boisei becomes extinct.
-1,100,000 The genus Canis (modern dog, wolf, jackal) appears; the gray wolf (Canis lupis) appears in Eurasia, just in time to beg cooked food from homo erectus and begin the taming process?
-1,000,000 The modern continents settle down. Mauna Loa ("long mountain") on Hawaii Island first erupts, becoming Earth's largest volcano; the first documented historical eruption is in 1843 C.E. One Million Years B.C. stars homo (homogenized) sapiens actress Raquel Welch. There are only about 18.5K members of Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, and Homo sapiens in all of Africa, Europe, and Asia, indicating a catastrophe that almost rendered them extinct, according to Lynn Jorde of the U. of Utah in 2010. Dendrosenecio kilimajari giant groundsel emerges on Mt. Kilimanjaro, resembling a giant candelabra.
-900,000 Hominins at Olorgesailie on the floor of the Eastern Rift Valley of S Kenya (40 mi. SW of modern-day Nairobi) make pear-shaped Acheulean hand axes for butchering animals; discovered in 1919 by British geologist-explorer John Walter Gregory (1864-1932), and excavated in 1943-7 by Louis and Mary Leakey.
-867,102 Theoretical date for the beginning of the world's most recent Dvapra Yuga (Copper Age) (a cycle of 864K years).
-800,000 The Matuyama-Brunhes Reversal of Earth's magnetic field begins, taking 22K years to complete. The oldest human footprints outside Africa are found in Norfolk, England.
-780,000 Homo antecessor is discovered in 1977 in Spain by Eudald Corbonell et al., becoming the oldest known fossil of Homo in Europe.
-750,000 The gray wolf spreads to North Am.
-700,000 The most recent global reversal in rock magnetization takes place about this time, followed by a steady change with time until the present day. The earliest known interbreeding among human pops. occurs when the Super-Archaics in Eurasia interbreed with a Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestor?
-630,000 The Lava Creek Eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano in Wyo. buries areas as far away as S.D. in hot ash; it is due to erupt again in 600K years?
-500,000 Between this year and modern times 74B human beings are born (Nat. Pop. Council). Woolly mammoths cross the Bering land bridge. Homo erectus Peking Man (Sinanthropus pekinensis) is discovered in 1927 at Zhoudoudian (near Beijing) in China, along with chipped stone and bone fragments by Canadian anthropologist Davidson Black (1884-1934); its skull is somewhat larger than Pithecanthropus but thicker-walled and with a smaller brain capacity, and its teeth are larger than modern man but smaller than apes; not really a missing link? - these are what all the Chinese pray to? Heidelberg Man (Homo erectus sapiens heidelbergensis) (found in 1907 in Germany) is the first homo sapiens; it teeth resemble modern man, but no evidence of culture is found.
-478,000 Stone tools are used in Boxgrove, England by Homo heidelbergensis; discovered by Mark Roberts in 1993.
-476,000 The oldest known wooden structure is two joined logs in Kalambo Falls, Zambia.
-450,000 Fossil teeth from the Italian Peninsula have Neanderthal-like features. Alalu, ruler of the Annunaki (Nephilim) lands on Earth and mines gold in Africa to save their home planet of Nibiru (in our Solar System), engineering Homo sapiens as a slave race to do the work, then setting up Eridu on the Persian Gulf as Earth Station I, according to Zecharia Sitchin (1920-2010) - and Jehovah was sleeping like a baby?
-440,000 Neanderthals and humans begin to separate?
-400,000 The last Martian Ice Age ends. Elephants disappear from the Middle East, causing them to lose up to 60% of their animal-sourced calories and forcing them to find alternatives. Neanderthals (Neandertals) appear in Europe, with continuous control of fire and modern speech from the get-go? Homo erectus begins to evolve into early Homo sapiens (ends -200K)? Homo sapiens may have used speech because of a developed hypoglossal canal? The Qesem Teeth come from Rosh Haain 7 mi. of Tel Aviv, Israel; if they are human then they double the age of Homo sapiens, and prove that they evolved in the Near East. Homo sapiens discovers fire? The oldest DNA found so far comes from this era in Siberia. Flint axes and blades are found in Devon and Cornwall. Giant Megaloceros (Gk. "great horn") extinct deer species in Eurasia is the ancestor of the modern fallow deer.
-350,000 Fire is first used by humans in Tabun Cave 12 mi. S of modern-day Haifa, Israel.
-347,000 The Holstein (Mindel-Riss) Interglacial Period in the Alps begins (ends -323K).
-300,000 The Riss Glaciation in the Alps (named after the Riss River in Upper Swabia) begins (ends -128K), along with the Saale Glaciation (ends -128K). Nine species of human live on Earth, incl. Homo neanderthalensis of Europe, the Denisovans of Asia, Homo erectus of Indonesia, Homo rhodesiensis of C Africa, Homo naledi of South Africa, Homo luzonensis of Philippines, Homo floresiensis (hobbits) of Indonesia, and the Red Deer Cave People of China; Homo erectus becomes extinct first; by -8K they are down to one, Homo sapiens - but not their erections? Humans live in small communities of hunter-gatherers, contributing to civilization? An asteroid impacts, creating the 0.5-mi.-wide Wolfe Creek Crater in Western Australia (second largest "obvious" meteorite crater on Earth). The Woolly rhinoceros (coelodonta antiquitatis) diverges in C Asia, migrating into Europe, becoming one of the most common inhabitants of the tundra-stepps; its closest modern-day relative is the Sumatran rhino. Giant hand axes are made in the Medway River Valley in SE England.
-250,000 The dire wolf arises in North Am. (until -11K); no relation to gray wolves? A human phalanx dated to this time is found in Logudoro, Sardinia.
-230,000 Heavily-built (but nimble), beetle-browed, short-forearmed, squat 5-ft.-6-in.-tall arctic-adapted Neanderthal (Neandertal) Man (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis), wwith brains 10% smaller than homo sapiens (1600 vs. 1800 cubic cm.) that developed differently), and has the gene for language and plays the flute appears in Le Moustier Cave in Peyzac-le-Moustier, Dordogne, SW France, (-160K) with a stone spearhead technology along with signs of a violent nature, a belief in an afterlife, single burials with tools or meat, group sepulchers, and a cave bear cult; they occupied Europe as early as -300K?; their large broad noses allow them to inhale more air when needed? they interbreed at least twice with their cousins (same ancestor?) the homo sapiens, but are an evolutionary dead end, leaving modern humans outside Africa with 1.8%-2.6% of their DNA (leaving no human DNA in the Neanderthal genome?), giving leukocyte antigens that impart resistance to diseases not present in Africa; in 2006 DNA from Neanderthal bones from Croatia (-45K) are sequenced by Svante Paabo (Pääbo) (1955-) of the Max Planck Inst. for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany; in 2010 U. of York scientists propose that they have feelings; in 2010 a study finds that they reach maturity faster than humans; on Jan. 16, 2007 Erik Trinkaus (1948-) of Washington U. in St. Louis announces that a skull found in a Romanian cave incl. features of both modern humans and Neanderthals, suggesting possible human-Neanderthal interbreeding; in 2002 Damian Labuda of the U. of Montreal identifies a haplotype in the human X chromosome that in 2010 is traced to the Neanderthal genome in humans outside sub-Saharan Africa and Australia; in 2010 it is found that non-African humans have up to 2% of Neanderthal DNA, which is 99.7% identical to modern-day human DNA; in 2017 it is found that 1.8%-2.6% of the genes of non-African humans come from Neanderthals - Jean Auel, have you been drinking tonight? The bison crosses the Bering land bridge to America - oh give me a home?
-200,000 The most recent common ancestor of modern humans is a woman who lived about this time in Africa, according to the Mitochondrial Eve Hypothesis; Modern Homo sapiens appear in sub-Saharan E Africa about this time, and all modern humans derive from their migrations, with little or no i nterbreeding with archaic human groups (e.g. Homo erectus), based on the rate of mitochondrial DNA mutations; this contradicts the theory that independent Homo erectus pops. around the world evolve independently into Homo sapiens beginning around -1M; there is little genetic difference between the three main genome groups, African, Eurasian, and East Asian; humans really emerged within a complex set of populations scattered across Africa?; humans originally had spines in their penises to remove competitors' sperm?; modern humans really originated in wetlands S of the Zambezi River in S Africa?
-195,000 The Omo remains in modern-day SW Ethiopia are the oldest known anatomically modern humans; discovered in 1967-4 by Richard Leakey et al.
-194,000 A Homo sapiens jaw is unearthed in Misliya Cave on Mt. Carmel in Israel (-194K to -177K), 60K years older than Homo sapens fossils discovered in the Skhul and Qafzeh Caves in Israel, dated to 120K-90K B.C.E.
-174,000 The earliest known manmade structures in a Neanderthal cave in France?
-170,000 Mt. Etna (Aetna) (Muncibeddu, Songibello)on the E coast of Sicily is formed; by modern times it develops about 250 baby cones on the major cone's flank, and gains the nickname Big Mama. Inhabitants of the Border Cave in the Lebombo Mts. of Kazulu-Natal cook starchy plants.
-160,000 Homo sapiens idaltu ("first born") is found in Herto, Ethiopia.
-150,000 Homo sapiens sapiens (modern humans) appear in tropical Africa, and radiate from there. Human mitochondrial lineages converge on a single woman who lives about this time. The 310-mi.-long Platte River in North Am. forms; sandhill cranes adapt, using it as a nesting area. Human remains dating to this time are found in 1979 in Sardinia. Woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, and reindeer live in the Iberian Peninsula. Polar bears diverge from brown bears.
-140,000 Homo sapiens sapiens evolves from Homo sapiens in Africa, based on mitochondrial DNA mutations. Solo Man (Homo erectus soloensis), living along the Bengawan Solo River in Java become extinct.
-130,000 Beginning of the Late Pleistocene Extinction, which causes large (over 100 lb.) mammals (mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, horses, tapirs) to become extinct in North Am., Africa, Eurasia, Australia and elsewhere; by 8,000 B.C.E. about 80% are wiped out; was it caused by trophic cascade, where humans upset the balance between predators, causing them to go at each other? Stone tools in Crete prove that humans sailed the Mediterranean this early?
-128,000 The Riss Glaciation ends, and the Eeemian (Sangamonian) (Ipswichian) (Mikulin) (Kaydayky) (Valdivia) (Riss-Wurm) Warming begins (ends -113K), becoming the Last Interglacial Period; Northern Hemisphere winters are warmer and wetter than today, with some areas slightly cooler; melting ice sheets in Antarctica caused by a 2C temp. rise cause sea levels to rise by 3m; the hippopotamus ranges as far N as the Rhine and Thames Rivers; trees grow as far N as S Baffin Island (vs. Kuujjuaq, N Quebec today); the Great Plains prairie-forest boundary is near Lubbock, Tex. (vs. Dallas, Tex. today).
-125,000 Homo sapiens migrate from Africa across the S Red Sea into Arabia? The San People os S Africa diverge from other Africans.
-123,000 About 123,000 B.C.E. forests reach as far N as North Cape, Norway above the Arctic Circle; hazel and oak grow as far N as Oulu, Finland.
-120,000 Anatomically modern humans live in the Klasies River Caves on the Indian Ocean coast of South Africa, using sophisticated versatile tool kits superior to European Neanderthals (until -95K). 47 human teeth are discovered in China dating to this time (-80K?), suggesting that humans migrated there from Africa before Europe. Evidence of cooked starchy plant consumption in Klasies River Cave, South Africa.
-113,000 The Eemian Warming ends, and the and the Wurm (Würm) Glaciation, (named after a river in Bavaria), the Last glacial period begins in Europe (ends -9.7K), becoming the last ice age in the Alpine region, and the youngest major glaciation to extend beyond the Alps, with avg. yearly temps below -3C; this period sees 25 Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) Events, rapid warming over decades followed by global cooling over a few cents., expanding the polar front S across the North Atlantic Ocean; each is preceded by a Heinrich Event, in which large armadas of icebergs break off from glaciers and traverse the North Atlantic, depositing rock matter on the sea floor and adding extensive amounts of fresh water. Bone tools in Henan Province, C China date way before the next earliest discovery in -33K.
-108,000 Two pieces of flint are unearthed in 2010 in Dartford, Kent, England, becoming the earliest evidence of Neanderthals in Britain, who most believe abandoned the island between -200K B.C.E. and 63K B.C.E.
-100,000 The Lower Paleolithic (begun -2.5M) ends, and the Middle Paleolithic (Palaeolothic) division of the Paleolithic (Stone) Age begins (ends -40K), characterized by flake tools. Modern humans begin migrating out of Africa into Eurasia? Modern humans inhabit Zhiren Cave in S China and Bat Cave in C China. Neanderthals in Pesturina Cave in E Serbia make stone tools? Intact DNA cannot be recovered from fossils older than this. The Sahara is cool and wet enough to support sparse hunter-gatherer pops., and from thence modern humans spread to North Africa and the Near East? Kilauea (Hawaiian "spewing", "much spreading") emerges above sea level, becoming one of five volcanoes on the Big Island of Hawaii, and the most active, emitting 2K deg. F basalt lava, the hottest known, enough to pave 20 mi. of 2-line highway per day in modern times. 90% of modern-day Earth species came into being about this time? Condors emerge in North Am. The dire wolf (Canis diris) emerges in North Am., co-existing with its cousin the gray wolf. The bulldog bear (Arctodus simus) appears in North Am.
-90,000 Hunter-gatherer pops. gradually begin moving from NE Africa into the Nile Valley. Qafzeh Cave in Israel has human inhabitants. Blombos Cave in South Africa has some of the earliest known human-made bone tools.
-80,000 A major human pop. expansion begins (ends -30K).
-78,000 A Neanderthal painting on a woolly mammoth tooth is found in Tata, Hungary.
-76,000 The oldest known human burial in Africa is in Kenya, a child in Panga ya Saidi Cave.
-75,000 About this time the Neolithic Subpluvial (Holocene Wet Phase) begins (ends -3500), bringing wet rainy conditions to N Africa incl. a Green (Wet) Sahara. Neanderthals begin to use speech - professional sports can't be far behind? Humans begin using tools to sharpen stones into spears and knives at Blombos Cave in South Africa?
-73,000 About this time a long cooling period begins in Europe (ends -9K); the Wisconsin Glaciation, the last glaciation begins in North Am., reaching a max ice extent approx. 21K B.C.E.; it is responsible for the disappearance of Neanderthals, not displacement by modern humans, who simply were better able to adapt to cold?; it was really human diseases that caused Neanderthals to go extinct?
-72,000 Are races born out of fire or ice? The Toba Volcano in Sumatra, Indonesia supererupts, about 5K times as large as Mt. St. Helen in 1980, burying human sites containing stone tools; no humans arrive in S Asia until after this; did 6-10 years of global volcanic winter followed by a 1K-y. cooling episode cause rapid genetic divergence in modern races of humans?; did humans not only survive but thrive after the eruption?
-70,000 Neanderthals in Europe and humans in Africa use stone tools and fire, are capable of abstract thought, and can make abstract art. Humans begin their Walk Out of Africa, forming only three genetic groups, African, Eurasian, and East Asian?; they swarm into Europe with 10x larger numbers than the local Neanderthal pops.?
-68,000 An early Africa-Asia Migration begins, ending up in Australia in -48K?
-63,000 The Big Emigration from Africa along a southernly route via the coasts of the Arabian peninsula and Asia to India begins, consisting of a few hundred hunter-gatherer nig, er, humans, who go on to reach Southeast Asia, then Australia by -48K, according to a team at the U. of Glasgow led by Vincent Macaulay in 2005; subsequent migrations from W Asia populate Europe and N Africa with the master, er, white race?; the modern-day Orang Asli (Malay "original men"), the earliest known inhabitants of Malaysia, living in the Niah Caves in Sarawak are their descendants?
-62,000 Humans make stone points for arrows in Sibudu Cave, South Africa. A cave painting in the Cave of Maltravieso in Caceres, Extremadura, Spain is made by Neanderthals?; discovered in 1951.
-60,000 buried wood trunks dug up in 1999 indicate that surface temps are 2C-3C warmer than today, even though atmospheric CO2 is 200 ppm (ends -40K).
-58,000 Humans disperse from Africa via a southern coastal route from the Horn of Africa through Arabia to India, displacing native Neanderthals; Neanderthals living in caves in the Middle East bury their dead on biers of flowers and boughs, as discovered in 1968 in Shanidar Cave, 250 mi. N of Baghdad by Arlette Leroi-Gourham of the Musee de l'Homme in Paris. Height-challenged hobbit-sized (30-45 in. tall) human relative Homo floresiensis (Flores Man) (AKA Homo hobbittus), with large eye sockets, small front teeth, and a brain one-third the size of modern Homo sapiens lives on the tropical Flores Island in E Indonesia near New Guinea and Java, with a stone tool technology; they survive until -10K?; discovered in 2003 by Kiwi archeologist Michael John "Mike" Morwood (1950-2013) of the U. of New England near the Liang Bua Cave on Flores Island; does island living favor shrinking sizes, incl. brain size?; in 2006 critics led by Robert D. Martin of the Field Museum in Chicago argue that the find is really a modern Homo sapiens with microcephaly, and on Aug. 21, 2006 an article by Robert B. Eckhardt of Penn State U. supports it; in 2007 Morwood shoots back with the book A New Human; in 2014 a team led by Robert B. Ekhardt of Penn State U. pub. an article claiming that they are really Homo sapiens with Down syndrome; the consensus later emerges that they are a distinct species. Humans sail from SE Asia to Australia about this time?
-58,000 Humans live in Europe in S France before the Neanderthals become extinct, not -38K?
-50,000 A .03-mi.-dia. asteroid impacts the Earth, creating the 0.7-mi.-dia. Barringer Meteor Crater near modern-day Winslow, Ariz. Evidence of a settlement is found on Wawel Hill near Cracow, Poland. The original roman a clef, "The Naked Ape Wears Prada"? About this time the ancestral "naked ape" (what color skin?) homo sapiens sapiens pop. begins to migrate from NE Africa (over the, ahem, Red Sea?), according to the Human Genome Project, evolving into five major races in five continents, with skin color genes varying dramatically then becoming fixed and stable, and finally a defining attribute, evolving into a big social rivalry, status and control thing after they come back into contact (which is just about at the beginning of recorded history), the lighter-skinned invariably wanting to avoid mating with the darker-skinned, preferring inbreeding, even virtual incest to whiten the descendants as much as possible, with social (white flight?), economic, and criminal forces all arrayed to weed out any darker-skinned misfits who stumble through the gauntlet and don't end up as slaves, creating an illusion of evolution by systematic inbreeding?; let's not even mention the kinky hair, thick lips, wide nose, funky armpit odor, receding forehead, small cranium, thin male hips (fast-twitch muscle) (slow-twitch white boys can't jump but can lift weights and play quarterback and linemen) and huge female hips (steatopygia) of the banana-eating monkeys, er, apes pretending to be humans and acting like men so they can go after "our white wimmen" (of course, it's okay for a white man to "whiten up" a black woman's pups?); meanwhile the stockier Neanderthals own the territory the we-got-our-own-problems humans are moving into, and die out in about 5K years (competition, new germs, climate?); they don't die because of poor diet - that's all, just one bitch slap a week? Art and advanced tools become widespread, as heavy brows are replaced with rounder heads, indicating lower testosterone levels and/or fewer hormone receptors. "It is somewhat disquieting to speculate on the fact that even 50,000 years ago, in the early Stone Age, the human family contained individuals with innate capacities for reasoning and self-expression approaching those of a Shakespeare, a Beethoven or an Einstein" - Frederick Seitz (1911-2008) (pres. of Rockefeller U. in 1968-78). The cave bear, the primitive hunter's preferred trophy appears in Europe, after which human expansion causes it to cease being abundant in C Europe around -33K and start becoming extinct in -22K.
-48,000 Human remains in Topper, S.C. dating to this time are found, the oldest Paleoindian site in the Americas? X-Woman is unearthed in 2008 in Denisova Cave in C Asia; the Denisovans range across Asia and interbreed with ancestors of modern-day Melanesians; on Aug. 22, 2018 scientists at Oxford U. pub. an article in Nature announcing the 2012 discovery of 13-y.-o. Denisova 11 in the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mts. of Siberia, whose DNA is half-Neanderthal and half-Denisovan, becoming the first direct evidence of interbreeding.
-46,026 The start of the Week of Creation (Jehovah's Witnesses).
-46,000 Pedra Furada in NE Brazil is inhabited by non-Clovis Paleoindians?
-44,000 Southern Australia is settled.
-43,188 The Mayan date for the end of the Fourth Sun; the end of the Fifth Sun will be in 2012 C.E. (45,200-year cycle).
-43,000 The Wurm Glaciation causes the Near East to become more dry and infertile, causing modern humans and Cro-Magnons to migrate from Africa into S Asia and Asia Minor, then over a wide land bridge on the Mediterranean rim and Danube River into SE Europe, C and W Europe, and Eurasia. The Neanderthals disappear from the Iberian Peninsula 5K years earlier than the rest of Europe? The first Homo sapiens settle in Europe in Bacho Kiro Cave in modern-day Bulgaria,; they are more closely related to East Asians?; and Neanderthals teach them how to make bear tooth necklaces? The Aurignacian Culture appears in E Europe, followed by W Europe in -40K to -36K; discovered in Aurignac in Haute-Garonne, S France in 1860 by French geologist-paleontologist Edouard (Édouard) Lartet (1801-71). Ust'-Ishim Man in W Siberia contains the oldest modern human DNA to have its genome decoded. Stone tools are made in Mongolia.
-42,000 Modern humans live in Lebanon. Cave art in Leang Bulu' Sipong, Sulawesi, Indonesia depicts part-human part-animal therianthropes hunting large malls with spears or ropes; the first evidence of belief in supernatural beings?
-41,600 King's Holly (Lomatia) (family Proteaceae) begins growing near Melbourne, Australia; discovered in 1937 by Charles Denison "Deny" King (1909-91), it is disappears, then is rediscovered in Oct. 1996 by scientists; it stands 26 ft. high and grows along a mountain gully for nearly 1 mi., and reproduces asexually, meaning it's perfect and doesn't need to rely on genetic diversity for disease resistance?; the world's oldest modern living organism? - if it only had a tricorder?
-40,000 If the 4.6B years of Earth's existence were reduced to a single day, the 40K years of human existence would cover only the last 2 sec. The Upper Paleolithic (Palaeolithic) division of the Paleolithic (Stone) Age begins (ends -10k); the Aurignacian Period of the Upper Palaeothic begins (ends -28K), with blade tools manufactured by flaking pieces of stone off larger pieces; the first evidence of fishing in Australia. A climate-changing volcanic eruption in Liguria on the Italian Rivera in the Phlegraean Fields W of modern-day Naples devastates Europe, wiping out most of the Homo sapiens, with some surviving in rock shelters incl. Riparo Bombrini. The first bees appear. Tianyuan Man near Beijing are related to ancestors of Native Americans, and are different genetically than Europeans; discovered in 2003. The Caves of Nerja in SE Spain (discovered on Jan. 12, 1959 C.E.) contain Neanderthal cave paintings; they were really made ca. 18K B.C.E. by modern humans? Human remains from this epoch are discovered in the Old Crow Basin in modern-day Canadian Yukon territory. The La Brea Tar Pits open for business in modern-day Los Angeles, Calif. The 2.4 in. mammoth tusk Venus of Hohle Fels; found in SW Germany in Sept. 2008 by Nicholas J. Conard of the U. of Tubingen, becoming the oldest known example of 3-D figurative representation of humans; a mammoth ivory tool for making rope in Hohe Fels Cave in SW Germany is discovered in 2016 by Veerle Rots et al. of the U. of Liege. The Didgeridoo is invented by Aborigines in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, Australia, made out of termite-ridden eucalypus wood. Cave art in Indonesia. Rock art paintings of emu-like Genyornis newtoni are made in the Arnhem Land plateau in N Australia. The Cave of El Castillo in Cantabria, Spain contains the oldest known cave art; handprints prove that most of the artists are women?
-39,026 The end of the first day (light) (Jehovah's Witnesses).
-39,000 The first modern humans arrive in the Middle East.
-38,000 First arrival in Europe of behaviorally-modern human beings, with the ability to make modern speech sounds, complete with stone and bone tools, cave paintings, burials, etc., incl. throwing spears; the Neanderthal Uluzzian Culture in S Italy arises, with innovations incl. projectile points, bone tools, ochre, and fishing and small game hunting; the Cro-Magnons, discovered in 1868 by paleontologist-geologist Louis Lartet (1840-99) (son of Edouard Lartet) in Les Eyzies, Dordogne live alongside Neanderthals, to whom they are genetically unrelated; Cro-Magnons have larger brains than modern humans, and are later called European Early Modern Humans instead; humans eventually cross the Bering Land Bridge into North Am; a third of the ancestry of modern Native Americans is traced to W Eurasia? Ostrich-eggshell beads are made in Kenya. Mammoth ivory carvings are made in Vogelherd, Germany. The Aurignacian Lion Man (Lowenmensch) sculpture in the Hohlenstein-Stadel Cave in Germany is carved from mammoth ivory, becoming the oldest known animal-shaped and anthropomorphic sculpture, and oldest example of figurative art; discovered in 1939.
-37,000 A spear point dating to this time has been found in modern-day Lewisville (near Dallas), Tex.
-36,000 A Neanderthal male is struck on the head with a sharp stone weapon, and members of his tribe attempt for 2 mo. to heal the wound?
-35,000 The Lebombo Bone (calendar stick) is made from the fistula of a baboon in South Africa.
-34,000 The Siberian unicorn becomes extinct; by modern times there are only five surviving species out of 250. A small flint flake in Kiik-Koba Cave on the Zuya River in the Crimean Mts. contains scratches indicating symbolic thinking by Neanderthals?
-33,000 A stone axe found in NW Australia in the Burrup Peninsula, becoming the oldest known.
-33,000 A 10K-year interstadial warming period in the Warm glaciation begins (ends -23K). Homo Sapiens begins its current run of domination of the Earth, thriving from France to the islands of SE Asia and Australia; the 160K-year story of their spread from sub-Saharan Africa since -200K or -195K into a world dominated by Neanderthals using superior tools is "one of the greatest untold stories in the history of humankind" (Ted Goebel, Texas A&M U.); homo sapiens interbreed with other species of the Homo genus, resulting in 2% of the genetic material in modern African pops.; Neanderthals really died out in Europe about 40K B.C.E., so that humans never saw any? - the odyssey of Ayla doesn't count? A Taimyr wolf bone from Siberia is the most recent known common ancestor of wolves and dogs; discovered in 2015 by Pontus Skoglund of Harvard U. and Love Dalen of the Swedish Museum of Nat. History. The Kostenski Site 250 mi. S of Moscow on the Don River shows stone, bone and ivory tools (blades, scrapers, drills, awls, and antler-digging mattock pickaxes) being used in an innovative way to survive in one of the coldest, driest places in Europe, according to John Hoffecker of the U. of Colo. in 2007 - maybe the Russkies really did invent everything first? Cave paintings in Chauvet Cave in SE France (discovered 1994) include horses, showing that "from the beginning they were valued for their spirit" (J. Edward Chamberlin).
-32,026 The end of the Second Day (firmament) (Jehovah's Witnesses).
-32,000 Stones are used to grind flour in Grotta Paglicci, S Italy.
-30,000 Japan is connected to the Korean Peninsula by a land bridge. The pop. expansion of homo sapiens (begun -80K) ends. The cave bear arrives in Europe, and the Neanderthals begin a cult to worship their most formidable prey?
-28,000 Beginning of the last North Am. Ice Age. The Aurignacian Period of the Upper Paleolithic (begun -40K) ends. The earliest time for a human migration from Asia to America based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA; they linger in Beringia for as much as 15K years before going S? The Neanderthals just up and (poof?) disappear in Europe and Eurasia, leaving Cro-Magnons and Homo sapiens sapiens the field? Denisovans interbreed with Neanderthals and modern humans? Dogs emerge from a line of gray wolves in Europe that later becomes extinct?; it really takes until -13K to domesticate wolves? Beginning of the Sandia Culture in modern-day New Mexico. Human settlements are made in Rottnest Island off the coast of Australia. Flour is being ground in Italy, Russia, and Czech.? Cro-Magnons carve phases of the Moon onto a bone in Blanchard, France.
-26,500 The last known remains of Neanderthals (Mousterian Culture) are found in the Arctic Circle. The earliest evidence of canid domestication in modern-day Czech Repub.
-25,026 The end of the Third Day (dry land and plant life created) (Jehovah's Witnesses).
-25,000 The basic technology of Weaving is developed by the Gravettian People in modern-day Czech. Bison migrate to North Am. over the Bering Strait. The Mammoth Hunter of Dolni Vestonice has ridged eyebrows; the Venus of Dolni Vestonice is a ceramic nude statuette, the oldest known ceramic article. Stirton's Thunder Bird becomes extinct. Two newborn humans ("Ice Age babies") are buried in a hillside in N Austria near the Danube River city of Krems beneath mammoth bones with a string of 31 beads; found in 2005 by Christine Neugebauer-Maresch of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
-24,000 About this time the sea level reaches a minimum as ice sheets jutting out from Antarctica become fully attached to the sea floor; about 12,000 B.C.E. the West Antarctic Ice Sheet contracts to a small size, then collapses and calves into the sea about 10,300 B.C.E., after which inland glaciers begin breaking up 200-1,400 years later; the Larsen Ice Shelf in the N Antarctic Peninsula collapses in 2002 C.E. DNA comparisons indicate that the first Americans may have diverged from groups in the Mal'ta site on the Angara River near Lake Baikal in Russia ("the Blue Eye of Siberia") about this time. About this time (-25K to -28K?) the Venus (Woman) of Willendorf in Austria is carved from oolite limestone from N Italy; proof of a fertility cult, a matriarchal society, or just prehistoric porno?; they are depicted as obese because they were living close to glaciers and barely surviving? The Red Lady of Paviland (a male) is ceremonially buried with ivory and seashell ornaments in Wales.
-23,000 The interstadial period of the Wurm glaciation (begun -33K) ends, and the Devensian Glacial Maximum begins, causing a de-peopling of Britain and N Europe (ends -13K). The Neanderthals are extinct by now? - no modern groups dare trace their origins before this for fear of being called you know what? The Venus of Petrkovice in modern-day Ostrava, Czech. is a mineral Venus figurine.
-22,000 The gene pool of Mal'ta Boy in Mal'ta, SC Siberia becomes the ancestor of 30% of modern Native Americans. Charcoal from Neanderthal fires in Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar is dated by Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum to this era, 2K years after Neanderthals are thought to have become extinct?
-21,000 The earliest known Fishhook is discovered in the Jerimalai Shelter in Australia.
-20,000 Abou this time the Last Glacial Maximum (GM) sees a cold Earth whose N continents are covered by vast ice sheets, with low atmospheric CO2 levels; global sea levels drop, exposing the floors of the Bering Strait, Bering Sea, and Chukchi Sea; the global avg. temp is 7.8C (46F). The Upper Paleolithic division of the Stone Age (begun -40K) ends, and the Epipaleolithic Period begins (ends -8300), with hunters using compositive tools and hunting both large and small mammals, incl. the late Aurignacian Period in Aurignac, S France, which produces ivory, bone and horn carvings, mainly nude female figures. About this time the Khoisan people of the Kalahari Desert in S Africa (largest pop. on Earth) begin a drastic pop. decline. The Viet Nation (Van Lang) is formed from the Hung Vuong (Hung King) according to their legends - sideburns are neat and clean? Genetic exchange between humans from Africa and Europe and E Asia continues until this time? The first human occupation of South America is in Serra da Capivara, Brazil, who resemble aboriginal Australians? Rock paintings are found in Bhimabetaka, India. Evidence of a horse culture is found in cave paintings found in Iberia. A human face carved on an egg-sized limestone pebble on the Balkh River in N Afghanistan is found in 1969 by Am. archeologist Louis Dupree (1925-89) of the Am. Museum of Nat. History in New York City, becoming the oldest known specimen of portable Asian cave art. The Mal'ta-Buret' Culture and Afontova Culture develop in Siberia.
-19,000 The Last Glacial Maximum sees a cold Earth whose N continents are covered by vast ice sheets, with low atmospheric CO2 levels. The Scottish, Cumbrian, and Scandinavian Ice Glaciers begin to melt, raising the sea level, and exposing and opening NE England to humans - nunatak at 11 o'clock?
-18,026 The end of the Fourth Day (Sun, Moon, and stars light the Earth) (Jehovah's Witnesses).
-18,000 The last ice age in the N Hemisphere ends, caused by changes in the Earth's orbit?; modern-day New York City is covered by the 1K ft. thick Wisc. Ice Sheet, part of the Laurentide ice sheet, which is 5K ft. thick in the Adirondacks and 10K ft. thick in Labrador. The earliest migration date for homo sapiens from Asia to North Am. over the Bering Land Bridge, according to Y chromosome studies. The deep water circulation in the Atlantic Ocean reverses. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia begins to form. A wolf jawbone used as a tally stick is carved in modern-day Czech. A well-preserved skeleton of a mammoth from about this time is found in Siberia in 1974, becoming one of the largest ever discovered. Science: The Ishango Bone, a lunar calendar is made in Ishango, Africa near Lake Edward; made in -9K to -6.5K?
-17,000 About 17,000 B.C.E. the Holocene Glacial Retreat begins, seeing the glacial ice sheet begin its retreat to the N, accelerating about -13K and ending about -9.7K with abrupt warming and rapid melting of the remaining ice sheets of Europe and North Am.; melting ice causes a global sea level rise until -4K, averaging 10mm/year (1m/cent.), with rapid jumps of up to 2.5m/cent.; sea levels continue to rise to modern times at a rate of 2.8mm/year, for a total of 120m (400 ft.). Human remains are found in 1973-8 in Meadowcroft Rockshelter near Pittsburgh, Penn. overlooking Cross Creek just S of the Laurentide Ice Sheet by Am. archeologist James M. Adovasio (1944-) that possibly dates as early as this, making it the oldest known Native Am. cultural site. Human settlements in Wadi Kubbaniya, Egypt.
-16,000 About this time the Wurm Glaciation in the European Alps reaches its maximum extent in the Gschnitz Stadial; there is a mi.-thick glacier on Manhattan Island, Seattle, Berlin, and London, and a continuous belt of winter sea ice extending S to Cape Hatteras. The Older Dryas (end -13K), based on oxygen isotope ratio cycles and the marker species Dryas octopetaia is a climatic period during the coldest stadial after the Weichselian Glaciation in N Europe. The last ice age in the S Hemisphere ends in response to warming in the N Hemisphere; sea level rises by 120m in the next 8K years, eroding the coastline of Australia by 50m/year, for a total of 120m by modern times since the arrival of aborigines in Australia in -38K.
-15,150 The Age of Libra begins (ends -13,000).
-15,000 Large amounts of ice and meltwater enter the North Atlantic Ocean, causing regional cooling along with the H1 Megadrought in Africa and S Asia; Lake Victoria, Lake Tana, and Lake Van dry out. Phorusrhacos becomes extinct. The Great Missoula Floods in Wash. state gouge hundreds of sq. mi. The Magdalenian Culture (Age of the Reindeer) (ends -10K) of the Upper Paleolithic div. begins in the La Madeleine rock shelter in SW France (ends -10K); cave-dwelling Cro-Magnons prefer animals, esp. reindeer, and make tools of polished stone and bone, producing artistically refined cave paintings in Altamira, Spain 13 mi. WSW of Santander in N Spain (discovered in 1879), and Lascaux, France near Montignac in SW France (discovered 1940); at Altamira ocher-tallow crayons and stone lamps are found, along with animal bones with engravings identical to those on the cave ceilings; a Magdalenian horse head carving rocks da house. The Bradshaw Rock Paintings in N Australia are dispersed in 100K sites in a 50K sq. km area.
-14,700 The Gault Site in Tex. 30 mi. N of Austin contains 90+ stone tools (incl. biface blades) and human teeth fragments, discovered in 2012, becoming the oldest known tools in North Am., beating the Clovis culture by 4K years.
-14,500 The earliest known cemetery in the Middle East is built at 'Uyan al-Hammam in N Jordan, discovered in 2000 by Edward "Ted" Banning of the U. of Toronto.
-14,000 Atmospheric concentrations of nitrous oxide (N2O) begin increasing 30% (ends -8K). Butchered bones are found in Bluefish Caves, Yukon, Canada, beating the Clovis people by 10K years.
-13,800 Earliest known human occupation of Fort Rock Cave in Oregon.
-13,500 The Buttermilk Creek dig in Austin, Tex. is the oldest "credible" archeological site in North Am. The oldest known weapons in North Am. come from the Debra L. Friedkin site 40 mi. NW of Austin, Tex.
-13,000 The Age of Libra (begun -15,150) ends, and the Age of Virgo begins (ends -10,750). The last Ice Age (Devensian Glacial Maximum) abruptly (a few decades) ends with temperatures rising several degrees C; in the Near East there is a N migration of monsoon rains, creating a "Garden of Eden" effect in Jordan, Palestine, and Mesopotamia, and spawning universal flood myths? The first people settle in the Americas in the Columbia River basin after arriving by sea? Tree-ring dating cannot be used before this date in N Europe because it was covered by Ice Age glaciers? Macrozamia trees in the Tambourine Mts. of Queensland, Australia date to this era (-13K to -9K). Tools found at the Cactus Hill site 45 mi. S of Richmond, Va. in 2007 are dated to this era, which contradicts the theory that the first humans reached the U.S. from Alaska and Canada around -9.5K. A civilization flourishes in Huaca Prieta in costal Peru, making elaborate handwoven baskets. The Eurasian Ancestral Language is spoken in S Europe, spreading from Portugal to Siberia, becoming the mother of modern languages incl. Japanese and English.
-12,900 A comet hits E Canada, causing wildfires followed by chilly weather that helps wipe out the woolly mammoths along with three-fourths of the large mammals plus the Clovis people, as indicated by tiny diamonds found in Arlington Canyon on Santa Rosa Island off Calif. and other sites in 2009?; the real cause of mammoth extinction was inbreeding?
-12,500 The Sahara Desert becomes moist and wet, with a savanna climate, peaking about 4,000 B.C.E., when the Sahara reverts to desert conditions, causing a marked decline in the magnitude of Nile River floods between 2,700 B.C.E. and 2,100 B.C.E. Beginning of the Natufian Culture in the E Mediterranean (Levant) incl. Jericho, Tell Aswad, Ain Mallah, Beidha, Mureybet, Negev highlands (ends -9.3K), which develops the Harif point to hunt desert mammals such as gazelle, ibex, and hare in the Negev Desert. Human remains are found in Tibito, Colombia dating to this time. Paisley Caves near modern-day Paisley, Ore. are the earliest definitively-dated human presence in North Am.; discovered by Luther Sheeleigh Cressman (1897-1994) in the 1930s, along with Fort Rock Cave, Ore., where a pair of sagebrush bark sandals dated at -8.5K to -7.3K is discovered in 1938, becoming the oldest human footwear discovered. Mastodon hunters with stone tools and canine companions live in the Page-Ladson site in modern-day Aucilla River, Fla. Human live in N Fla.
-12,400 The first bread is made in NE Jordan?
-????? The continent of Atlantis sinks, creating either part or all of the Atlantic ocean; the remnant of the master race, the modern-day Irish, take to drink to forget the past (as the saying goes, "God made whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world [again]").
-12,000 About this time the 200-year Older Dryas begins in N Europe (ends -11.5K), based on oxygen isotope ratio cycles and the marker species Dryas octopetaia, a cold dry climatic period during the coldest stadial after the Weichselian Glaciation in N Europe. About this time the Allerod (Allerød) Oscillation begins (ends -11K), causing warm moist temperatures in the N Atlantic; the interstadial to the Older Dryas? An ice-free corridor opens, allowing big game hunters to enter North Am. by crossing over the Bering Strait from Russia into Alaska, becoming the first Paleoindians? End of the Homo floresiensis line in Flores island in Indonesia as a result of a volcanic eruption, or modern humans doing them in - if there was such a line? Human settlements of reindeer hunters are found in Denmark. Florida is 2x as large as it is today. Domesticated beans, peas and root plants are in use in Spirit Cave in modern Thailand. Beginning of the Jomon Culture in Japan (ends -300), with hunting and fishing but no farming, and sunken pit-dwellings. Human remains in Cactus Hill, Va. dating to this era are found. Humans lived in Cuba? A religious sanctuary in El Juyo Cave in the Cantabrian Mts. in N Spain incl. an altar with animal sacrifices; the altar has an image that is half human and half lion or leopard. The use of fire by humans begins about this time? A hearth is built in Triquet Island off the W coast of British Columbia, Canada. The first known dentist lives in Riparo Villabruna in the Venetian Dolomite Mts. of Italy.
-11,800 About this time (-12.7K to -11.5K) Meltwater Pulse 1A causes global sea level to rise 16m-25m (52 ft.-82 ft.) in 400-500 years (40mm-60mm/year). A mastodon rib bone with a Clovis-type projectile point near Manis, Wash. (near Seattle) is dated to this time. A human figurine in Ayia Varvara-Asprokremnos, Cyprus is the earliest complete human figurine known, a cross between a pillar and a mother goddess.
11,500 Start of the mammoth-chomping Clovis Culture in North Am., which enters earlier via Alaska and the E side of the Rocky Mts, and makes it to the North Am. Southeast; the Clovis Site in Blackwater Draw 11 mi. SW of Clovis, N.M. dates to this time, known for fluted stone bifacial Clovis points for spears, used to kill big game like mammoths; discovered in 1929 by James Ridgley Whiteman (1910-2003).
-11,050 Rye is cultivated n Mesopotamia.
-11,026 The end of the Fifth Day (water animals and birds created) (Jehovah's Witnesses).
-11,000 Comets bombard North Am. and Europe. The larger mammals all become extinct in a 400-year period in North Am., incl. the saber-tooth tiger, tapir, bulldog bear, and dire wolf; should be -9K or -8K? - did the discovery of fire cause a BBQ craze in Clovis Texas? The Abu Hureyra settlement on the Euphrates River (near modern-day Terqa in E Syria) is founded (ends -9.5K); discovered in 1971 by Andrew M.T. Moore of Oxford U.; in 1974 the Soviets build a dam across the Euphrates, flooding the site. The Powars II red ochre mine in modern-day Platte County, E Wyo. is the earliest known mine in the Americas. The Penon (Peñon) Woman lives near Mexico City, with a long narrow skull characteristic of Caucasians. A human waterhole in Taima-Taima, Venezuela dates to this time. Cave paintings are made in Lascaux, France (discovered in 1940). A bone with an incised image of a mammoth or mastodon is made in Fla. Cedros Island in Mexico is first settled. A 3.1 cm. 14.6g clay torso of a woman is made in Aidanikumahara, Japan, and found in 2010; another is found in Matsusaka, Japan in 1996.
-10,800 A disintegrating giant comet strikes the Earth, causing a 1.2K-year global deep freeze that brings global species extinctions?; start of the Younger Dryas (-10.8K?) (ends -9.4K) (named after an Arctic plant of the rose family which appears), last cold snap of the Pleistocene (Ice Age) Epoch (begun -2.586M), caused by an inrush of fresh glacial meltwater from glacial Lake Agassiz into the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans greater than the volume of all the Great Lakes combined, causing abrupt (10 years) cooling in Europe and North Am. and return of near-glacial conditions for 1K years, leading to extinction of megafauna in North Am. incl. mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers, and giant short-faced bears, and the extinction of the Clovis Culture; it is caused by a comet impact (over the Great Lakes?) that set large areas of North Am. on fire and caused the extinction of most of its megafauna along with mass starvation of humans?; in 2019 Francis Thackeray et al. of the U. of the Witwatersrand discover a platinum spike in Wonderkrater in Limpopo Province (N of Pretoria), South Africa, matching others around the world and indicating a meteorite or asteroid impact; according to Alan Brandon of the U. of Houston, the real reason is volcanic activity; the melting of continental ice sheets reverses in Scotland and Norway; abrupt drought in the Near East brings on the beginnings of agriculture, the creation of granaries to store food, etc., ending the mobile way of life, and causing pop. concentrations around sources of water, changing Stone Age hunter-gatherers into the world's first farmers, with the first domestication and genetic selection of plants incl. wheat and grains, along with the first monumental architecture?; Antarctica heats up by 1 deg C, coupled with rising CO2; it is caused by a comet ripping through North Am., according to Douglas J. Kennett et al. of the U. of Ore. in 2009; in 2010 C. Vance Haynes of the U. of Ariz. finds evidence for a comet to be lacking; nanodiamond evidence is inconclusive and tends to contradict the comet theory?; in 2013 Mukul Sharma et al. of Dartmouth College claim conclusive evidence of an asteroid or comet impact; atmospheric CO2 peaks at -10,680.
-10,500 The Age of Leo begins (ends -8,600), seeing a golden age where deglaciation causes a 300-ft. rise in sea level. Monte Verde, Chile is inhabited (ends -9500). The Delaware River Valley is inhabited by Paleo Indians. The earliest known human settlement in S New England is in modern-day Avon, Conn. near the Farmington River. An 8-mi.-long cliff wall of paintings is drawn in Serrania La Lindosa in the Amazon rainforest, depicting mastodons, giant sloths, and other extinct animals; discovered in 2019.
-10,450 Do the three pyramids of Giza make an exact match with the main stars of Orion (Betelgeuse, Rigel) in this year? Did the Great Sphinx have to be built at this time to account for the erosion now on it? Is there a major pole shift about this time, which shifts Antarctica closer to the South Pole?
-10,000 World pop.: 1M. Cro-Magnons and their Magdalenian culture disappear from Europe as the climate warms and they leave their caves, forgetting their artistic skills. The Neolithic Rev. (Transition), a transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture, incl. the cultivation of wheat begins in Mesopotamia (Fertile Crescent), diffusing N through Europe. A passable Ice-Free Corridor from the Bering Land Bridge through the Laurentide Ice Sheet into North Am. forms. A low altitude comet air burst over the Atacama Desert turns sandy soil into glass. The Early Archaic Period begins in North Am. (ends -7K); the paleoindian Clovis culture occupies the rest of North Am.; beginning of the Folsom Culture in North Am.; human settlement is found in Tennessee, beginning of 500-year dessication period in the North Am. Southwest. Boskop Man in South Africa is a human with a brain size 30% larger than modern humans, indicating not evolution but devolution and strangely supporting the Bible's Adam and Eve story?; first discovered in 1913 by Frederick William FizSimons (1870-1951). Lake Lisan in Palestine, extending S from the Sea of Galilee, which reached a max. level of 800 ft. then shrunk and/or dried up begins refilling, creating the Dead Sea? The Spirit Cave in NW Thailand contains cultivated rice grown by the Hoabinhian (Hoa Binh) Culture. Marijuana (Cannabis) is first cultivated in Mongolia and S Siberia. Evidence of human settlement in Burma (Myanmar). Evidence of human habitation of Scotland. Stone works are built around (under) Lake Titicaca, and in Bimini. Every human encampment later than this date shows signs of domesticated dogs. The horse begins to disappear from North Am. and South Am. Cats begin wandering into Near Eastern settlements looking for rodents feeding on stored grain, and domesticate themselves, according to molecular geneticist Stephen J. O'Brien of the Nat. Cancer Inst. in Md. et al. in the June 29, 2007 ed. of Science, which explains why the five subspecies of wild cats often look like pet cats? An asteroid impacts W of Ungava Bay in Canada, producing 0.12-mi.-dia. Merewether Crater. Seeds from arctic lupines from this period are successfully grown in 1967 by Alf Erling Porslid (1901-77) et al. Textiles are found in Guitarrero Cave in the Andes Mts. in Peru. Cave engravings near modern-day Bamberg, Germany are found in 2011, the first Stone Age artwork found in Germany; they are heavy in erotic images incl. breasts and penises. The Flintstone Family flourishes in Bedrock :) The 720 ft. Pyramid of the Sun, AKA Visocica Hill in Bosnia is built?
-9700 The Pleistocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period (begun -2.586M) ends, and the Holocene (Recent) Epoch of the Quaternary Period begins (ends ?); Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa is topped with ice (until 2021?). The Neolithic founder crops are domesticated in the Fertile Crescent, spreading to the Middle East, North Africa, India, Persia, and Europe: emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley, lentils, peas, chickpeas, bitter vetch (ervil), and flax.
-9500 A cremated skeleton of a Paleoindian child known as Xaasaa Cheege Ts'enliin (Upward Sun River Mouth Child) in C Alaska is found in 2011, becoming the oldest N North Am. human remains. Arlington Springs Man on the Channel Islands of Calif. dates to this time. Plato's date for the sinking of the legendary city of Atlantis; stone structures have been found on Atlantis Massif; Atlantis was really located in Mauretania in the Eye of the Sahara AKA the Richat Structure. Is there a galactic core explosion that occurs in 26K-year cycles and causes catastrophes on Earth around this time? Is there a polar shift about this time that causes green Antarctica to become iced over, making it the true Atlantis? Is there a close encounter with a celestial body that raises the Andes Cordillera, drains the great lake of the Sahara, joins the Mediterranean Lake to the Atlantic, and sinks fair Atlantis? Was the Great Sphinx built 1K years earlier to mark this coming period of history? A copper ornament dated to this era is found in Iraqi Kurdistan. The earliest known human temple is in SE Turkey, the hilltop sanctuary of Gobekli Tepe ("potbelly hill") W of the plain of Harran 15 mi. E of Urfa and 20 mi. N of Syria, covered with engravings of vultures, scorpions, foxes, and decapitated people; it functions as an observatory?; Urfa (Edessa) has often been claimed to be Ur, home of Abraham, maybe the C-14 dating is wrong and this temple proves the Bible true?
-9400 End of the Younger Dryas (begun -10.9K), and the return of warm wet conditions in the Near East. Figs are domesticated in the Middle East.
-9300 The Arctic becomes virtually ice-free (until -7.7K). End of the Natufian culture in the E Mediterranean (begun -11K).
-9200 The oldest known domesticated dog lives in SW Tex.?
-9000 The Boreal Age begins in N Europe, based on the study of Danish peat bogs and named for Axel Blytt and Rutger Semander, characterized by a pollen zone; The weather warms as the glaciers melt, becoming restricted to Greenland and Antarctica; the Bering Land Bridge begins to be submerged, but plants and animals are still living there; the Am. mastodon, mammoth and other large Ice Age mammals become extinct from hunting by humans, AKA the Blitzkrieg Hypothesis of Paul Sidney Martin (1899-1974). The African Human Period in the Sahara begins (ends -3K). The Folsom Site in N.M. dates to this time (-11.5K to -8K); discovered by black ex-slave cowboy George McJunkin (1851-1922), who in 1908 finds a mammoth skeleton with a Folsom spear point in its ribs; first excavated in 1926, with 23 bison found killed with Folsom points. Nevali Cori in E Turkey in the Taurus Mt. foothills on the middle Euphrates River is settled, erecting temples and monumental sculptures. The beginning of the domestication of sheep and other animals, plus a wide variety of plants sparks a radical change to a food-producing culture in Mesopotamia, later spreading to Europe and Asia; man only succeeds at domesticating 14 animals incl. goats, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, camels, water buffalo, llamas, reindeers, etc., 13 from Asia, North Africa, and Europe, and most incl. cows, pigs, and sheep from the Fertile Crescent. Beginning of the settlement of Canada along the Eramosa River in S Ontario. A human settlement around Ushki Lake in Russia occurs about this time. A human settlement in Cedros Island off Baja Mexico dates to this time. The city of Jericho is continuously inhabited from this time to -1580. Fell's Cave in Patagonia is inhabited (ends -8000). Art: The Ain Sakhri Lovers in the Ain Sakhri Caves near Bethlehem are the oldest known representations of two people engaged in sexual intercourse; faceless, it also resembles various sexual parts. The 9-ft.-high Shigir Idol is recovered from a bog in the Urals in 1890 C.E.
-8820 Amesbury in Wiltshire (incl. Stonehenge) is the earliest known occupied settlement in England that is occupied to modern times.
-8800 The Clovis culture disappears in SW North Am. along with the mammoths - Elvis always was a momma's boy? A larch tree grows beneath the modern-day Morteratsch Glacier in the Swiss Alps, living 337 years.
-8600 The Age of Leo (begun -10,750) ends, and the Age of Cancer begins (ends -6,450).
-8500 End of of Folsom culture in North Am.; beginning of the more mobile Archaic Period (ends -2K). The Neolithic 1 Period begins in the Levant (ends -8K); beginning of permanent settlements in the E Mediterranean region (Jericho, Palestine, Byblos, Lebanon). The first Plains Indians occupy the Great Plains in North Am. in E Wyo., known for meat-on-the-hoof bison (buffalo). A hunter-gatherer homestead is found at Cramond near Edinburgh, Scotland. Stone cutting tools dating to this time are found in Daisy Cave on San Miguel Island in the Channel Islands of Calif. by Jon Erlandson of the U. of Oregon, proving that boat travel is going on? Shell middens (kitchen waste) dating to this time are found on Cedros (Cedar) Island off Baja Calif.; other heaps dating to this time are found on the Andean coast. Human remains dating to this time are found in Quebrada Jaguay in SC coastal Peru.
-8400 Dogs are domesticated in Jaguar Cave, Idaho? (sheep?)
-8300 The Paleolithic Period ends with the final retreat of the ice sheets, and the Mesolithic Period begins (ends -5500). England is settled from Europe; there is no English Channel yet?.
-8100 Is there a disaster about this time which changes our view of the stars?
-8000 World pop.: 5M; stays stagnant for 3K years?; pop. of Jericho, Jordan: 2K. Siberians cross the Bering Strait to Alaska even as the Bering Land Bridge (Beringia) goes down for the last count. Marmes Man, a skeleton (no artifacts or tools) is discovered in the Marmes Rockshelter at the confluence of the Snake and Palouse Rivers in SE Washington state in 1968 by a team from Washington State U., becoming the oldest human remains found in the New World? The Great Lakes begin to form, incl. Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Ontario (lowest elev.), and 31.7K sq. mi. Lake Superior (world's largest freshwater lake); the 36-mi. Niagara River flows from eerily-south Lake Erie into Lake Ontario through Niagara Falls, which erode their way 10 mi. upstream by modern times, forming 160-ft.-high Horseshoe (Canadian) Falls and 167-ft.-high American Falls; the lakes have a 300-ft. difference in elevation. Mt. Fuji in Japan begins erupting. The extinction of ice age mammals forces humans to develop agriculture? The first blue-eyed human is born after a mutation in the OCA2 gene that controls melanin production. Beginnings of agriculture in Europe; cereals and pulses (legumes) are cultivated in the Fertile Crescent; bread (unleavened) is made. Beginnings of agriculture in New Guinea, incl. taro and bananas, which can't be stored for years like wheat and are low in protein, causing their development to be stunted, causing them to stay in the Stone Age and eat giant spiders for protein?; meanwhile the boomerang is invented in New Guinea? The first Blue-eyed human becomes the ancestor of all blue-eyed humans, according to Hans Elberg of the U. of Copenhagen. Human skeletons from Greece show signs of anemia and malaria, according to John Lawrence Angell (1915-86) of the Smithsonian Inst. (1970). An African caveman named Apiuna lives in Lagoa Santa in SE Brazil? The horse disappears from America, probably hunted to extinction by Clovis people - looking for their mammas? The fruit fly begins colonizing Asia and Europe from sub-Saharan Africa. Human occupation of Toronto, Canada. Beginning of the Berbers in Algeria. The wooden Shigir Idol is lost in a bog in e Russia; dated by scientists in Mannheim, Germany in 2018. A cultic temple and house are built in Eshtaol SW of Jerusalem. Inventions: Scandinavians become the first to use combs. The wheel is invented in Asia? The earliest known calendar consists of 12 pits dug in a field in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
-7900 Pottery is made in Henan, China.
-7800 The last ice age ends, and the Atlantic Period Begins (ends -4.8K), AKA the Holocene Climatic Optimum (Thermal Maximum) (Megathermal) (Hypsithermal) (Mid-Holocene Warm Period), becoming the warmest period of the Holocene, a warmer climate than today; humans are still mainly at the hunter-gatherer stage; meanwhile complex trade routes begin to be set up in the Mediterranean basin between now and -5000, according to British archeologists Colin Renfew (1937-) et al. Emmer wheat is domesticated in Damascus, Syria on the banks of the Barada River, becoming one of the oldest cities to survive to modern times - seen it all, eh, Klaatu Barada Nikto? Egyptian shepherds use crushed castor beans as sunscreen. Humans live in On Your Knees Cave on Prince of Wales Island in S Alaska; the diet is primarily seafood.
-7600 Cave paintings in Tocquepala, Peru.
-7500 The Motola archeological site in S Sweden has a pop. with light skin gene variants SLC24A5 and SLC45A2, along with HERC2/OCA2, which causes blue eyes and contributes to light skin and blond hair; the hunter-gatherers of C and S Europe have darker skin until SLC45A2 gives them light skin about 5600 B.C.E. The Neolithic 2 Period begins in the Levant. The Neolithic Subpluvial (Holocene Wet Phase) begins (ends -3500), bringing wet rainy conditions to North Africa incl. a Green (Wet) Sahara; the climate of Britain warms up to modern conditions, and Britain is reforested. periodic tidal waves over the next 2K years inundate 1K sq. mi. of land now under the North Sea. The city of Catal Huyuk (Çatal Hüyük) (Çatalhöyük), the first known city (Neolithic farming village where babes don't wear tops?) is founded in SC Turkey 80 mi. SW of the ancient Konya Lake on the Konya Plain (N of the Taurus Mts.) (until -5700); discovered in 1961 by James "Jimmie" Mellaart (1925-2012) of the U. of London; the houses adjoin each other, rooms have built-in benches, white clay plaster is used, and people live on the roofs; the Seated Woman of Catal Huyuk Sculpture depicts a goddess cradling newborn leopard cubs; the dead are beheaded and set out to be eaten by vultures (excarnated), then the bones stored under beds?; the original city (Catal East) is abandoned in the early Neolithic age after a mini-Ice Age begins (-6200), then after several hundred years in the later Neolithic and Copper age a new one (Catal West) is built to the west, which lasts 1.5K years? Cats are domesticated in Cyprus. A sunken city is found off the Gulf of Cambay in India.
-7400 The earliest known boat is a dugout discovered in Holland. 5'9" 38-55-y.-o. right-handed Kennewick Man AKA the Ancient One (found in 1996 C.E.), with features resembling Ainu people of N Japan lives in modern-day Kennewick, Wash. along the Columbia River; he has mild arthritis and a healed spear wound, and was deliberately buried on his back, which is too bad as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers covered up the site in 1998 to combat river erosion; he is not Caucasian, but Polynesian, like the modern-day Ainu in N Japan; on Feb. 18 2017 he is reburied in the high desert of the Columbia Plateau before a crowd of 200+ - looks like Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart?
-7200 Mallorca is settled. Squash, peanuts and cotton are being cultivated in the Nanoch Valley of N Peru, according to Tom D. Dillehay of Vanderbilt U. et al. in 2007. Lime-plaster statues are made in Ain Ghazal in Jordan.
-7100 The agricultural community of Bus Mordeh in Khuzistan (SW Iran), on the Deh Luran plains at the foot of the Zagros Mts. is inhabited. The Jhusi (Jhunsi) Neolithic site at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers in modern-day Uttar Pradesh is inhabited, becoming one of the earliest known farming sites in South Asia.
-7000 About this time the Holocene Thermal Maximum (Climatic Optimum) begins (ends -3K); Hinlopen Strait in Svalbard is 4C-7C warmer than modern times even though CO2 concentration is 260 ppm; Eden-like conditions exist in Egypt? The Early Archaic Period in North Am. ends, and the Middle Archaic Period begins (ends -4000), with pottery, spinning, weaving, and metal hammering. The first modern Euros arrive in Crete from Asia Minor, bringing farming, and spreading through the Aegean islands to mainland Greece. The Indo-European-speaking tribes orginate in Anatolia (Asia Minor), later diffusing around the Mediterranean, according to the 1987 Renfrew (Anatolian) Hypothesis of British archeologist Andrew Colin Renfrew (1937-); he later moves the homeland of Proto-Indo-Europeans to the Balkans in -5K; meanwhile in the 1960s Lithuanian-Am. archeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921-94) proposes the Kurgan Hypothesis, that they originated the Pontic-Caspian steppe about -4K. Large organized settlements incl. deep wells and huts in straight rows are built in Nabta Playa in the Nubian Desert 60 mi. W of Abu Simbel, Egypt. The Mehrgahr Neolothic site on the Kachi Plain of Baluchistan, Pakistan has evidence of wheat and barley farming, and cattle (zebu)-sheep-goat herding. About this time the Lahuradewa Neolithic site in the middle Ganges River region is inhabited. The Archaic-Early Basketmaker Era begins among the Pueblos of SW Am. (ends -1500). About this time rice is first harvested in the Yangtze Valley of China; widespread use is made of millet in China. About this time sesame, eggplant, and domesticated cattle are domesticated in the Indus River Valley. The earliest known poppy seeds are found in Cologne, Germany. The Al-Maqar civilization in the Arabian peninsula domesticates horses. Neolithic farmers in Jiahu, China brew 20-proof (10%) mead. Inventions: Flutes are played in China. Science: About this time Neolithic dentists in Baluchistan, Pakistan begin using flint and bowstring drills sans anesthesia to drill molars; the technique is forgotten by -5500? - Robert Macchiarelli of the U. of Poitiers, 2006. Art: Decorated skulls are made in Jericho, using plaster to build up the face, with shells for eyes; they have flat bases, A Volcano Mural in Turkey portrays the eruption of the Hasan Dag Twin Peaks volcano 70 mi. NE of Catalhuyuk.
-6900 England is still connected to Europe by a land bridge? Pottery is made in W Asia. The Neolithic village of Atlit-Yam on the Levantine coast flourishes; it is discovered submerged on the Carmel Coast off Atlit, Israel in 1984.
-6800 The earliest farming community in the Zagros Mts. lives in Jarmo in NE Iraq.
-6700 Maize is grown in Mexico, spreading to Central Am.; it is a form of domesticated teosinte?
-6650 A human settlement dating to this time is found in Palli Aike on the S tip of Chile.
-6600 Bus Mordeh in Khuzistan is abandoned, and Ali Kosh is founded. The kuvasz dog lives in Iraq.
-6500 The Strait of Dover (narrowest part of the English Channel) is formed after rising sea levels submerge Doggerland; Guernsey separates from France. The Modern European Gene Pool is formed when three tribes mix. The Ubaid Period in Mesopotamia begins (ends -3800). Sesklo in Thessaly is settled (ends -1500). Evidence of humans in Ulster, N Ireland. Horses are domesticated in India.
-6450 The Age of Cancer (begun -8,600) ends, and the Age of Gemini begins (ends -4,300).
-6400 The Neolithic 3 Period begins in the Fertile Crescent. Epipaleolthic (pre-dynastic) peoples inhabit Egypt. Beer and berry wine are being produced in Egypt; the Egyptian goddesses of beer are Tenenit (Tenenet) and Menquet; beer is sipped through straws, and goes great with onions?
-6300 Dingoes split from tame Indonesian village dogs, migrating to Australia and going wild. The city of Damascus on the E foothills of the Anti-Lebanon Mts. is settled (modern-day pop. 1.7M); in 661-750 C.E. it becomes the capital of the Sunni Muslim Umayyad Caliphate.
-6200 About this time after melting glaciers pour cold fresh water into the North Atlantic, the 8.2 KA Event sees cool meltwater from North Am. lakes flood into the North Atlantic, stopping ocean circulation systems, triggering a 400-year Mini Ice Age (after the Younger Dryas) (ends -5800), causing a temperature drop of 8 deg F and a drop in atmospheric methane levels of 90%, cooling the climate of Europe, Greenland, and SW Asia and causing the Euxine Lake level to drop, changing it from saltwater to freshwater (as rivers from the Balkans, Alps, and Caucasus Mts. drain into it), and creating grassland, which thrives because of the low elevation; meanwhile drier summers reduce crop yields, causing Catal Huyuk in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) to be abandoned, along with farms along the Anatolian plateau, Palestine, the Negev highlands, and the mountain flanks of the Fertile Crescent, and the Black Sea becomes their common oasis, attracting diverse white peoples of different language groups (capable of bricklaying, carpentry, painting, sculpting, leather, pottery, basket and jewelry work, etc.), and causing word transfer, such as Russian vinograd, Italic vino, Germanic wein, Anatolian wijana, Kartvelian wino, proto-Semitic wajnu, and proto-Indo-European woi-no. Inventions: The oldest known map comes from Catal Huyuk in Turkey.
-6100 The Halaf Culture begins in the Levant, Palestine, Anatolia (Asia Minor), and N Mesopotamia. Pecans are cultivated in Texas.
-6000 The Persian Gulf Oasis is swallowed up by the Indian Ocean; humans lived there for 100K years?; this leaves room for the theories of Zecharia Sitchin (1920-2010)? About this time the Etruscans in modern-day Tuscany, Italy begin as Stone Age farmers in Europe, who go on by -1600 to absorb new blood from the steppes of modern-day Russia and Ukraine. The first European farmers are invaders from the Near East (Turkey, Iraq et al.), according to genetic studies. La Brana (Braña) Man in Valdelugueros, Spain has blue eyes, dark skin, and dark hair, suggesting that it was farming not lack of sunlight that caused light skin to evolve. Fair-skinned Europeans who keep cattle herds develop a mutation allowing them to digest lactose. The Mesopotamians, Sumerians, and Hittites worship the male god Gozer and his gatekeeper Zuul; portrayed in the 1984 film "Ghostbusters". The first known farmers live in Kumtepe in NW Asia Minor near Troy. The first human settlements in Ireland are made by the Pretani or Cruithin (Dal nAraide, Ui Echach Coba, Conaille Muirtheimne) in NE Ireland (Ulster), who migrate from Cumbria in N England and Galloway in Scotland. Cattle are tamed in the Sahara, which is still green. Chickens (Gallus gallus) are first domesticated in N India, S China, and SE Asia. Wine is grown in the Caucasus Mts. The village of Lepenski Vir, on a cliff overlooking the Danube River in modern-day Serbia in C Europe is settled, featuring an Iron Gate Shrine; domesticated dogs, pigs and cattle are in use before tamed goats and sheep are introduced from outside the region, according to Hungarian archaeologist Sandor Bokonyi (1970). 13 mummies in the Sado Valley in Portugal. The first use of manure as fertilizer in Europe. About this time a recipe for beer in Babylonia is the first written mention of beermaking. Potatoes are cultivated in Peru. Olive oil is cultivated in Galilee, Israel. Women reign supreme in religion, law, and custom in Europe, especially around Anatolia (modern Turkey)? S Indian siddhar (sage) Agastya (Agathiyar), "Father of the Tamil Language" founds the Siddha (Sans. "one who is accomplished") Medicine System (the world's oldest?), the basis of Ayurvedic massage and cooking. A pottery jar from a village near Lake Urmia on the Iranian Plateau has retsina (grape and pine resin) wine residue, indicating wine drinking? Life-sized camel carvings in N Arabia.
-5700 Crater Lake is formed in modern-day Oregon when Mount Mazama erupts. The first genes for pale skin along with blonde hair and blue eyes appear in S Sweden.
-5600 About this time according to geologists Walter Clarkson Pitman III (1931-) and William B.F. Ryan of Columbia U. in 1997, a catastrophic Great Flood creates the Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus) when the Mediterranean creates a giant 30-mi. by 1-to-4 mi. crack called the Dardanelles (Gk. Hellespontus) (Turk. Cannakkale bogazi) (between Asia Minor and the Gallipoli Peninsula of Europe), connecting the Aegean (Mediterranean) Sea with the Sea of Marmara (Propontis), and then flushes over the even narrower (20 mi. x 0.5-2.75 mi. x 400 ft. deep) crack called the Bosporus (Bosphorus) Straits (Bosporus Thracius) (Karadeniz Bogazi) (Gk. "Ox Ford", since the goddess Io turned into a heifer and swam it) (originally a spillway for freshwater flowing into the Aegean Sea), and floods the freshwater Euxine Lake (should be White Is Right Lake?) (the S end later called the Golden Horn, one of the largest natural harbors on Earth) with a force 400x that of Niagara Falls, the sound carrying for 60 mi. and turning it into a mixed 6K-7K ft. deep, 165K sq. mi. (750 mi. x 380 mi.) fresh-saltwater body characterized by brutal (mainly winter) storms and a lethal anoxic bottom layer full of hydrogen sulfide, with the freshwater flowing toward the Bosporus on the top, while the saltwater comes in underneath 40 ft. down above the anoxic sublayer in a swift current (made swifter for 10 mo. of each year by winds), causing it to become impassable, and the shores unlivable, and the Epic of Gilgamesh to later call it "the waters of death", Pliny the Elder to call it Pontus Axenus (Pontos Axeinos) (Inhospitable Sea), and the Turks to call it Karadeniz (Harbinger of Death); later some jokesters call it the Pontos Euxeinos (Hospitable Sea); the Greeks call the Dardanelles the Hellespontus because Helle alleged drowns there while fleeing with the Golden Fleece; Leander (Gk. "lion man") dies in the Hellespont during a nightly crossing from Abydos to visit his virgin-vowed babe Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos, whose usual lamp in the tower is extinguished by a storm, and when his body washes ashore in front of her she throws herself in after him and drowns; lame Lord Byron swims it in 1810 C.E. to prove he's a lion man hero and not a girlie man?; the Black Sea becomes a challenge to sailors, engendering the 7-11 (July-Aug.-Sept.-Oct.-Nov.) story of Jason and the Argonauts (sent from Thessaly to fetch it from Colchis in modern-day W Georgia by his uncle King Pelias of Thessaly, he gets Hercules to join, but Herc's boyfriend Hylas is lured by nymphs on the coast of Mysia in Asia Minor, causing him to jump ship to look for him), until they figure out how to hop from island to island between storms, and drag a 40-ft. anchor to let the saltwater layer tug them along; the flood causes dispersion of farmers to Europe and Asia, incl. proto Indo-Europeans up the Dnieper River, Semites and Ubaids S to the Levant and Mesopotamia, Kartvelians to the Caucasus Mts., Linearbandkeramik (LBK) farmers up the Dnieper River over the Carpathians through Prague into the Rhineland N of the Alps (continually leapfrogging for reasons unknown?), Vincas farmers up the Danube River into the Hungarian Basin, Hamangians into Thrace, Danilo-Hvars through the Aegean and Ionian Seas into the Dinaric Alps on the E coast of the Adriatic, and Tocharians E to the Tarim Basin S of the Tien Shan Mts. and N of the Tibetan Plateau in Chinese Turkestan (later the route of the Silk Road). Woolly mammoths survive to this cent.? Zorats Karer in the Syunik province of Armenia is built, along with the observatory of Carahunge (Qarahunge)?
-5508 Sept. 1 is the date of Creation used by the Eastern Orthodox Church from the 7th to the 18th cent C.E., as borrowed from the Greek Septuagint trans. of the Bible by Libyan-born historian Sextus Julius Africanus (ca. 221 C.E.); Christ is born 5508 years, 3 mo. and 25 days after Creation; "Of the 7296 years which are supposed to elapse since the Creation, we shall find 3000 of ignorance and darkness; 2000 either fabulous or doubtful; 1000 of ancient history, commencing with the Persian empire and the republics of Rome and Athens; 1000 from the fall of the Roman empire in the West to the discovery of America, and the remaining 296 will almost complete three centuries of the modern state of Europe and mankind" [1492 + 296 = 1788] - (Gibbon, Ch. 40).
-5500 The Mesolithic archaeological period (begun -8300) ends, and the Neolithic (New Stone Age) Period begins (ends -4000), known for crop cultivation and domestication of animals; the The Ubaid Culture begins in the alluvial plains of Sumer and Elam, utilizing irrigation systems (the first farmers). The first farmers from Turkey and the Middle East arrive in C Europe, starting in Germany. Groups from the Bandkeramik (Linear Pottery) Culture N of the Danube River and S Moravia spread agriculture over Europe (until -4500). The Bulgarian coast changes from cold and dry to warm and moist, causing a great expansion of the forest, first oak, then hazel, elm, beech, alder, and finally birch. The Early Harappan Period (ends -2600) begins; India's original jackpot lotto game, Hinduism, oldest religion in the world is developed, based on Shruti ("that which is heard"), incl. the four Vedas, which incl. the Samhitas ("joined") (prayers) Brahmanas (legends), Aranyakas (ritual sacrifice), and Upanishads (abstract spiritual philosophy), which describe the ultimate reality of Brahman and the form of human salvation (moksha); the Trimurti (Great Trinity) ("three forms") consists of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva (Maheswara) the Destroyer, who are three manifestations of the Supreme Being called Ishvara, Bhagavan, Parameshwara, or Deva/Devi; some claim he has five forms, Ganesha, Shiva, Shakti, Vishnu, and Surya; all living creatures have an atman or soul; Hinduism split into four sects incl. Shaivism, whose devotees worship Shiva and wander about with ashen faces performing self-purification rituals, Vaishnavaism, whose devotees worship Vishnu, Shaktism, whose devotees worship Shakti or Devi the Divine Mother and perform animal sacrifice, and Smartha (Smarta), who worship all five forms and hold the Smriti ("that which is remembered") as the most authoritative texts, recognizing Brahman as the highest principle in the Universe, pervading all existence. The city of Susa between the Karkheh and Dez Rivers in Persia is inhabited. Flax is woven into fabric in Egypt. The first domesticated cats are introduced in Cyprus.
-5493 The Date of Creation used by the Ethiopian Church.
-5490 The date of Creation used by the early Syrian Christians.
-5400 About 5400 B.C.E. grape (wine) residue is found in pottery jars in from the Zagros Mts. of N Iran.
-5316 An Egyptian city in Sohag, Egypt 400m from King Seti I's temple in Abydos is the oldest known from the Egyptian First Dynasty.
-5300 Dairy farming agriculture spreads to the Tyrrhenian Sea, with the Linear Pottery culture keeping cows in wooden pens, harvesting grain and using rubbing stones, all made possible by the miracle food, milk? The horse is first domesticated by the Botai culture on the Kazakh Steppe at the S end of the Ural Mts. The Y chromosomes of two-thirds of modern European men can be traced back to three individuals who lived about this time?
-5200 About this time the Predynastic (Prehistoric) Period (Zeroth Dynasty) of Egypt begins (ends -3100); the Sahara Desert begins drying out (ends -4000), causing migration to the Nile Valley, where the earliest known agricultural settlement in Egypt is founded in the Faiyum Depression 50 mi. SW of Cairo, raising wheat, barley, sheep, goats and pigs; discovered in 2008. Agriculture spreads to the French-Iberian coast. Did the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum jump from chimpanzees to farmers who had cleared their habitat to create farms?
-5000 World pop. is still 5M, and begins increasing. The Caribbean islands begin to be settled from N South Am. Byblos in Lebanon is settled. Waves of Danube River ("Donau" in German, "Duna" in Hungarian, "Dunarea" [pr. DOO-nur-ya] in Romanian) colonists come to Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. The Neolithic Yangshao Culture along the Yellow River (Huang He) in China begins (ends -3000), growing millet, nuts, fruit, and vegetables, and raising pigs and dogs. Onions are grown in Egypt. The Mount Taylor Period Culture begins in NE Fla. along the St. Johns River Valley (ends 2000 B.C.E.) incl. future spaceport Cape Canaveral, Fla. The Avocado is domesticated in Mexico. The Jomon Period in Japan (begun -9000) ends. White skin color evolves among humans in N Europe. The grave of the Nordic Barum Woman is discovered on the shores of Lake Opmanna near Kristianstad in Scania (Sweden). Bricks are used for building material in Egypt. Linen cloth is woven in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The Guinea pig is domesticated for food in the Andes Mts. The tomato is domesticated. In this millennium copper working is invented in Rudna Glava ("Ore Head") in E Serbia. In this millennium wine is made in the Aegean region incl. Crete before grapes are domesticated. The gray wolf becomes the main canine predator in North Am. Architecture: In this millennium the Citadel of Arbil on the Great Zab River in Iraq is built. Science: The first known trepanation operations are carried out in Ensisheim, Alsace, France. Hesi-Re in Sumeria is the first known dentist.
-4900 The Bandkeramik (Linear Pottery) Culture spreads to Alsace, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, the German mountains, the Polish swamps, and the Slovakian and Hungarian regions. The pig is domesticated in China. Catal Huyuk is abandoned. The Goseck Circle is built in the Burgenlandkreis district of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, becoming the early known Sun observatory in Europe; discovered in 1991. Science The first known surgery is an amputation operation on the left forearm of an elderly man in Buthiers-Boulancuort (40 mi. S of modern-day Paris), France, complete with anesthesia and aseptic conditions.
-4800 The Neolithic farming community of Merimda Beni-Salame, in the Western Nile Delta 35 mi. NW of modern-day Cairo is founded; they bury their dead inside their settlements and produce clay figurines incl. a lifesize head; discovered in 1928 by German archeologist Hermann Junker (1877-1962). Piraeus in Greece, which becomes the main port of Athens becomes an island until -3.4K. The Egyptians develop a calendar.
-4713 Jan. 1 of this year is Day One in the Julian Day system invented by French Protestant scholar Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609).
-4500 Yamnaya herders from the steppes N of the Black Sea bring Indo-European languages to Europe, developing lactose tolerance about 4,100 B.C.E.? The Chalcolithic Period (Gk. "copper stone") begins in the Fertile Crescent and Europe when it is discovered that adding tin to copper forms harder bronze (ends -3.5K). Cattle arrive in N Africa. Coastal cultures in Greece, Mesopotamia, and China engage in diving as a form of food gathering, commerce, and warfare; breathhold divers dive for shells in the Mediterranean Sea. The 3K Carnac Stones (-3300?) are erected by pre-Celtic people in Brittany, becoming the largest collection of manmade stones on Earth. Mound building begins in the Mississippi River Valley. Asselar Man, a tall Negroid (Bantu?) skeleton is discovered in 1927 C.E. by Theodore Andre Monod (1902-2000) of France in Adrar des Ifoghas (near Essouk), Mali, becoming the oldest known black human skeleton. The earliest megalith graves are built in a 200-300-year period in NW France along the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The use of beeswax to pack cavities is the first known example of dentistry.
-4400 The city of Susa is founded in the lower Zagros Mts. of Persia between the Karkheh and Dez Rivers about 160 mi. E of the Tigris River, named after the god Inshushinak, ruled by the Proto-Elamite, Elamite, First Persian, Seleucid, and Parthian Empires; it is abandoned in 1218 C.E.; the modern-day town of Shush has a pop. of 65K; Tigris means arrow, meaning that it's faster than the Euphrates.
-4343 The Great Irish Elm Decline begins (ends -3290).
-4300 The Age of Gemini (begin -6450) ends, and the Age of Taurus begins (ends -2150). About this time funerary textiles are made with the same ingredients used on mummies in 2,500 B.C.E.
-4241 Earliest recorded date in an Egyptian calendar, which is based on a Sothic (Dog Star) (365-1/4 day) year, with a cycle of 1,460 years.
-4200 Evidence of wine in pottery in Dikii Tash 1.2 mi. from ancient Philippi.
-4122 The date of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden according to the Baha'i World Faith.
-4100 An asteroid impacts S of Alice Springs, Australia (-2200?), producing 13 impact craters, known as the Henbury Crater Cluster, the largest being 0.14 mi. across; the aborigines refer to this area as "sun walk fire devil rock". The oldest known winemaking equipment is unearthed in Armenia near the Iranian border in 2007.
-4004 The nightfall before Oct. 23 (Sun.) (autumnal equinox) is the date of the Creation, according to Protestant Bible fundamentalists, based on the work of Irish Archbishop James Ussher (1581-1656), who in "The Annals of the World" (1658) dates the birth of Christ in 4 B.C.E. (so Darwinian evolution is the Fall of the House of Ussher?); end of the Sixth Day (land animals and man created); Adam (d. -3074) (Heb. "red", as in dirt or maybe blood, the sacred mojo of Jehovah?) is created from the dust of the Earth (Gen. 2:7); Noah's birth is 1,056 years ahead (-2992); (the original think outside the bun wasn't a good idea?) the Garden of Eden, the birthplace of the human race, is the source of four rivers, the Euphrates (Prath), Gihon, Pishon (which encircles the entire land of Havilah), and Tigris (Hidekel), indicating either that it is in the snow-covered mountains or that there is no snow but that it receives a constant source of rainfall, making it a lush garden where food and medicine grow on trees and all humans have to do is tend them and live practically forever, as long as they don't disobey God (i.e. sin), which he tests them by telling them that one special tree is not to be eaten from, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad (Evil), which is not necessarily special in itself but is just an easy-to-obey test, which doesn't stop them from doing it anyway, introducing Sin into the world, causing God to instantly judge them as worthy of death and have them expelled from Eden so they can be die eventually despite any and all technology they can come up with to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves in the cruel world, while being barred from directly talking with God anymore, leaving them to their new god, I hope you know my name, please allow me to introduce myself, Satan, Heaven's Top Model, originally the 2nd of God's sons (the Logos being the first), who was originally given the prestige job of "covering angel" for newly-created humans, the first material creatures created in God's image (hence all the complicated gray junk in our skulls), and are given God's blessing of living forever while multiplying and filling the Earth and subduing it through the seed of the original perfect sinless man Adam, who can talk directly with God if he wants to and doesn't need a Savior yet? Too bad, Satan gets tired of working in the department store and letting little humans sit on his knee, and grows envious of God, figures these inferior humans can be subverted to worship him instead, and goes to work with the Great Deception, appearing in the form of a naughty girl's toy and getting a little too friendly with "weaker vessel" Eve (the first cunnilingus?), after which "the Serpent beguiled me and I did eat" of the fruit of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and sin (disobey an order of God, who made sinning both so easy and so hard, depending on whether you love him); then, even worse, she leads her lawfully-married-under-God husband Adam to do it for fear of losing his helpmate (tailor-made just for him out of his rib) and ending up as a lonely people counting crows again? Too bad, this leaves God standing in the wind, as sin is the ultimate grief man can give their all-loving Creator, who, as an all-just judge, must reverse the Blessing and institute the Curse, kick them out of the Garden of Eden (where life is easy and food and medicine grow on trees, and animals are all tame and vegetarian), and bar them from the gates by an angel with a flaming sword (Gen. 3:24), after which the area turns into a sour grapes forbidden zone overgrown with vegetation? Adam and Eve had perfect DNA, and all of their descendants (born outside of Eden) suffer from degraded DNA? That means they were lily white? Once he's past that problem, the fallen angel Satan (opposer) (serpent) (Rev. 12:9), AKA Lucifer (Light-Bringer, appearing to be Light) (Isaiah 14:12-13) and Devil (liar, slanderer) (1 Peter 5:8) (the original Elvis?), who sinned first, before Eve and Adam, and who is himself doomed to die and knows it, decides he'd rather rule in hell than serve in heaven, and keeps his new groupies deceived that the world is still their oyster, death is natural, but that if they stick with him and do his walk they're going to become as gods and know right from wrong on their own outside of God's favor, therefore stayin' alive, stayin' alive forever, when actually they're his slaves, told what to think and do, and led down the er, garden path as they are under judgment of eternal death by their wronged Creator and Supreme Court? So what do they do? The wrong thing? Instead of repenting, telling Satan to stuff it and trying to get right with God, they continue to sin and let themselves be used, abused and losed by Sick Santa, spreading their sin to their children, and filling a fallen Earth with fallen people more and more openly worshiping Satan as their god after totally alienating themselves from the Real Thing Big J (Jehovah)? Never fear, God-And-Man-No-Religion-Modern-Love, the Sun's coming up, as Big J knows the End from the Beginning, and is already an infinite number of moves ahead of his opponent Jim the Bow Snake, and has already put a Redemption Plan (Gen. 3:15) in place to turn the Curse back into the Blessing, after man earns it, not by doing good works expecting to pay the fine and avoid the death sentence, but by being faithful to the Invisible God no matter what bull Satan can tempt him with, and paying the one and only ransom God will accept, namely, not all of Nature Talks To Me, but Jesus swinging in the breeze? But that's where you come in? As a day is as a thousand (or thousands) of our years with God (2 Peter 3:8, Psalms 90:4), it will end up taking 4K+ years to implement, as humans reproduce into the billions and all the variations on the board get played? Meanwhile, God makes the Earth livable, but with no free lunch, i.e., only at the expense of eternal toil, pain in childbirth, sickness and disease caused by the loss of perfection (Gen. 3:16-19)? You got X-ray eyes? Too bad, until the game is played out this is Satan's world now, and he keeps accusing God of being unable to maintain the loyalty of man without giving him everything for free, and even appears in his court (Job chap. 1) to make a motion to allow him to have a free hand to afflict him with curses to show God he's right that even a righteous man will blame and curse God instead of him? Yi yi yi, Little China Guy TLW isn't anywhere near being born yet, but when he is he finally figures out that his sources for GTT are untrustworthy, and worse, that that gut feeling that the truth is horrible, horrible keeps bugging him, because maybe it's all true, and nobody knows me, nobody knows my name not, and Bad S has really been from Day One eternally working to keep all of Adam's seed separated from and not right with God with a legion of deceptions, using the carrot and stick approach to trap them into worshiping idols and false gods (really Satan's demons behind phony masks, with whom it is a giant mistake to even attempt to communicate with), using any trick to win the million tax-free bucks in Survivor: Earth, incl. taking credit for luck and coincidence, posing as dead souls to trick their dupes into thinking they're communicating with the dead after they sell their living souls first, and low blows forever, doing what he did with Eve, perverting gift of fertility along with his command to be fruitful and multiply, don't worry, be happy, you're been given everything and it works, and warping it into addictive, self-destructive, super-sinful lust fulfillments, holding up a mirage of an Edenlike state of happiness, when the con is that Satan is a piker, and God decreed death as the ultimate wages for sin, and everybody from Adam and Even down knows it whether they want to admit it or not, and being Chinese is no excuse? You're so pretty? Those are excellent words and your long tongue what? But Shake-It-Shake-It-What's-My-Line Wiley Coyote even tries to make that judgment into a lure to do it now while one can, for tomorrow you die and living too long is a drag, so party hearty and leave a good-looking corpse, and, like a chess game, the Devil works on each and every human mind 24/7 to bring him/her down from their original perfect relationship with the Creator, constantly trying to make them vulnerable, then finding their price, be it human sacrifice, sexual appetite, gluttony, astrology, magic and mediums, wealth and power, the Rolling Stones and Elvis, or above all, mass organized team-playing war (mass slaughter and rape, always pushing technology for more kill for the buck oh shut your mouth), ever seeking to make crime and sin a legal right and lifestyle; thus, history after Eden is a story of Good vs. Evil, White vs. Black, Christ vs. Antichrist, God vs. the Devil, and so it's to Beelzebub's advantage to twist history any way he can, and substitute his own, which makes two shiny pictures of himself, one in each of our eyes. But God is Good, and is always quite close at hand if you get Satan behind you, and being invisible and unable to communicate with sinful you directly because he's too holy (separate), he's already covered that base and directly inspired a tiny number of truly faithful down through the centuries with his Word, and insured that it has been transmitted and preserved, call it a miracle. So, listen to my heart beat, knowing what he has to cover up, the Genius Mister Sharky gets seriouser, says let's dance and fills up every program on the radio, twisting the Great Track of Time like a roller coaster, causing a strong deception that can fool even the wise and deceive even the very elect of God, because after all, ricochet, face the wall, Old Scratch and His Band are a higher form of life and keep concentrating despite our own chess players having to play tag team, ever coming and going, and therefore all of the Great Track of Time prior to the Fall, however scientific it appears, is actually sad Satanic fiction foisted on learned idiot-savants who are deceived into thinking they have a way to see backwards in time by looking at an endless coverup actively foisted on them by their former covering angel, who is actually covering his own tracks in maneuvering to become their total master and god, even though he knows that he and all his fellow fallen angels and human dupes will end up in the Galactic Computer's Bit Bucket when God calls the game and does a new Sysgen, with a lucky few saved for the New World, namely those supposed squares who took his word seriously and realized that all along it is checkmate in one move, God to Armageddon-1, if only we get humble, give up our seat and let him send in his you know what Son to play for us? Satan, I dedicate this Great Track of Time to you? Or is it all just a fairy tale and we came from da monkeys? Don't ask me I'm just doing my best to not have an opinion?
-4003 And just when
-4002 did lonely Adam
-4001 get his madam, his marriage certificate and his first holy nookie, popping the first cherry and causing the rest of us to start rolling out with no shame? Golden artifacts from the Black Sea port of Varna date to the end of the 5th millennium B.C.E., becoming the world's oldest golden treasure to be found in modern times.
Going back from here, we leave the realm of history and enter the realm of Archeology, Anthropology, Geology, Cosmology and Cosmic Speculation - real Science, or infinite regress and mirror tricks, ask your father?