Keywords: Key dates in the History of the planet, Main events in the History of our planet, Great inventions.

A TIMELINE FOR THE PLANET

A very brief history of the planet, with dates. How all the main specialties – life, geology and climate – tie up.

That’s what I’m aiming for anyway (more), though I’ve a lot of work still to do. And it’s not actually a time line, on account of Word’s limitations as a website design tool.

I’m aiming at ordinary folk like me. But I hope I’m sufficiently authoritative to be useful to scientists too. Where I’m not authoritative, I hope I’ve made it clear. I’m also controversial when I feel the need – but I hope I’ve made that clear too. If you find anything wrong, in your area of expertise, please click here

Bev Pease

Here are two

Important things

that you may not know

about birds

Click here for

The nature of Scientific truth

It’s very simple, but it’s not what

you may have been led to believe!

Possibly the oldest real-estate in the World,

at Ikilia Island off western Greenland Mankind’s greatest inventions

– nearly 4,000,000,000 years old (source Science)

Contents. Click here for a specific page.

How this site works

The table below covers the entire History of the Universe – all 13 thousand million years – kMy – of it.

But a click takes you to a more detailed table covering ‘only’ the 4½ kMy of the life of the planet.

Another click takes you to the ‘Age of large animals and plants’ – a mere 500 My.

And so on, ending up with the ‘Age of Humans’. For post ice-age events I’ve resorted to a series of essays covering my take on the major developments.

INTRODUCTION – A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE

(Click for life of planet , age of large animals & plants, age of mammals, age of hominids, age of humans)

For printer friendly version, click here

Time(kMy) Ago	Events		‘Epoch’
13	Big Bang more
	Oldest stars and galaxies
12

11

10?	Birth of our galaxy (Milky Way)

9

8
	Galaxy settling down into middle-age more
7

6

5
4.55	Fiery birth of Solar System and of our planet	[expand]	Hadean Aeon
4	Dawn of Life?? , Oldest real-estate		(4.55-4.0 kMy)
			Archaean Aeon
3	Planet gradually settling down		(4.0-2.5 kMy)
2.6	Bacteria run the place!
2
			Proterozoic Aeon
1	Planet approaching old age … teeming with (tiny) life		(2.5kMy-545My)
0.5	Terrible ice age life nearly killed off
0 0.45	Large creatures & plants appear 0.22: Dinos 0.00: humans etc.	[expand]	Age of big stuff