Talk:Geological history of Earth

the following page is currently under construction. kindly discuss before making any changes. 06:48, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Queries -sorry no time for review but may help calrify first
Ummm... a couple of things; I thought Tertiary and Quaternary had been renamed Paleogene and Neogene.

Also, why the jump from Precambrian to Devonian sections on the page?

cheers, Cas Liber | talk  |  contribs 03:29, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

''' the following issue has been discussed. 05:02, 15 June 2007 (UTC) '''

I would cut out 90% of the parts talking about life on earth and move it to its own page, and start with the creation of the soler system and the differences between the earth and other plants. Then move on to covering the two driving forces effecting geology of the earth- the oceans and the water cycle and plate tectonics. SXo basicly I think it would flow better and make more sense in the outline format:
 * cause of geologically change: formation of the sun, planet, ocean, plate tectonics weathering etc.
 * effects of geologically change
 * results of geologically change; change in atmosphere, life, continental drift, mountain building etc.

Hardyplants 19:36, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

'''replied on user talk page. Sushant gupta 08:21, 16 June 2007 (UTC)'''

Faults and folds
What is the purpose of this section? Seems a discussion of tectonic history would simply link to the fault and fold articles for definition and relevant info. Quite out of place in the present article. Also, the use of a children's Visual Dictionary is rather absurd as a reference. Those DK Visual ... books are great for kids, but hardly a reliable reference for a serious science article in Wikipedia. Removing section as inappropriate for the article. Vsmith 00:38, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

On further reflection, I've removed the entire Physical aspects section. It was a rewrite or copy of other wiki articles and not directly about the geologic history of earth. Vsmith 00:48, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Focus of article
The current discussion of the geologic eons seems to be focused almost entirely on the lifeforms with very little on the physical (plate tectonic) history. As such the article is rather redundant with History of Earth and Timeline of evolution. If the article is to have relevance it needs to break away from its current focus on the history of life on Earth. In other words it needs a massive rewrite. Sorry to be brutal, but I don't see the current article as a viable candidate for good article or whatever. Vsmith 01:21, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I have to agree... I've been following this article (but haven't done much) and had been wondering why it exists at all -- all of its sections are simply summaries of other articles, it seems. As it stands right now, the time-related sections are for one informal Eon or "SuperEon", one formal Eon, and one Era, all of which have detailed articles of their own; many more are omitted.  So I'm wondering what is or was the main point of this article?  Cheers Geologyguy 01:44, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


 * you have termed this redunduncy but what i was wishing to do was to summaries the related topics. Okay Vsmith, do answer this question- then what is the need of the article- Solar System. it also redunduncy. same repeated information regarding planets and kupier belt. this article is recently created. Hey Vsmith, your knowledge regarding geology is outstanding, no doubt! so why don't you try to improve this article with me. I am a 15 years kid you see and truely speaking geology is not my field. 11:13, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I would say you've done some good work - and for a 15 year old kid fantastic. Now, you requested a review and we've been doing that. Broad summary articles aren't my favorite editing field, but I've tried to help a bit and point out problems to be addressed. As User:J. Spencer pointed out on your talk page: get yourself a good modern college level historical geology text and use it for format and content ideas. As the paleontology stuff is well covered in other articles as pointed out above, you should focus more on the tectonic and other aspects of earth history by bringing together info about the various rifts and collisions among continents through time along with sedimentary basins, stratigraphic relationships, sea level changes and impact events - all in chronological order. That is a huge synthesizing job - and not one that I have time or inclination for at the moment. It's a challenging task (especially for a 15 year old kid :) - but jump into it and others (including me) will follow along and help out. Vsmith 14:28, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Article completely re-rewritten
Well now the article focuses only on tectonics. currently it needs much of wikification. within a week i would be nominating it for FAC. thanks, 16:30, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The section on Cenozoic is by epoch, some of which are referred to in the text as periods; that should be changed. To be consistent, this section should focus on the periods of the Cenozoic, Paleogene and Neogene. Thanks for all your work. Cheers Geologyguy 17:10, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

GA Review

 * 1) Broadness: Pass
 * 2) Well-written: Pass
 * 3) Images: Pass
 * 4) Factually accurate: Pass
 * 5) Neutral POV: Pass
 * 6) Stable: Pass

Good work on another geology article. It passes. Mit ch contribs 18:15, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Moon
I think there's a bit too much focus on the Moon for an article named "geologic history of the Earth." It should be reduced. ~ UBeR (talk) 20:22, 19 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Indeed, especially as it seems a direct copy from the Moon sections. Vsmith (talk) 23:07, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Cut the section. Material should be summarized from another article, rather than copied verbatum. Yes, a brief summary should be inserted with a pointer to the moon section. Vsmith (talk) 23:30, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Respectfully in disagreement with the above. Namely, the origin of the Moon as a result of a massive impact cleaving the Earth is a highly significant event in the history of Earth. Worthy of a section, or at least a few lines and a reference imho.
 * The origin of the Moon is important, and so are lots and lots and lots of other things in this article. This is why I reduced the content recently added, as well as some that was there. The citation to the source that you seem to favor is still there, just moved down into the body of the article. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 01:37, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Isambard for dedicated attention to this one topic. I agree with your intention to remove the short discussion down to the Hadean. Admittedly I do not appreciate having significant, possibly better information added by me being dismissed/undone forthwith. It is not for us to like, or not like the reports of our fellow scientists, but do please read the article. It's a small change to "your" narrative. I did make an editing error just now though, so I will replace it again the way I meant to originally. Please see it now: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neito Nossal (talk • contribs) 02:16, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Bad redirect
Evolution of animals redirects here. There is nothing about evolution of animals in this article. --98.217.18.109 (talk) 22:30, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
 * ✅ i have fixed it. Sushant gupta (talk) 13:15, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Pleistocene
The first sentence in the second paragraph sounds really wishy washy, vague, and philosophical: "The sum of transient factors acting at the Earth's surface is cyclical: climate, ocean currents and other movements, wind currents, temperature, etc. The waveform response comes from the underlying cyclical motions of the planet, which eventually drag all the transients into harmony with them." It is followed by, "The repeated glacial advances of the Pleistocene were caused by the same factors," which is good, except "these factors" are never explicitly described. I suggest replacing the first sentence with info on Milankovich cycles, and perhaps on their effect on atmospheric chemistry (though this may be too in-depth for the overview). Awickert (talk) 02:55, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Eocene and Oligocene
As it stands, the last part of Eocene is identical to the description of Oligocene. I sincerely doubt that the Alps folded twice... --Sir48 (talk) 17:57, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Snowball earth?
I thought that snowball earth was a hypothasys(sorry bad grammer) it doen't say that. Proterozoic Eon Main article: Proterozoic The geologic record of the Proterozoic (2.5-0.57 Ga) is much better than that for the preceding Archean. In contrast to the deep-water deposits of the Archean, the Proterozoic features many strata that were laid down in extensive shallow epicontinental seas; furthermore, many of these rocks are less metamorphosed than Archean-age ones, and plenty are unaltered.[10] Study of these rocks show that the eon featured massive, rapid continental accretion (unique to the Proterozoic), supercontinent cycles, and wholly-modern orogenic activity.[11] The first known glaciations occurred during the Proterozoic, one began shortly after the beginning of the eon, while there were at least four during the Neoproterozoic, climaxing with the Snowball Earth of the Varangian glaciation.[12] [edit]Phanerozoic —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bdoom (talk • contribs) 21:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Eocene onset of Cenozoic glaciations
I've added a 'citation needed' tag to the claim that the current period of glaciation started in the Eocene (40 million years ago) rather than the beginning of the Quaternary, which I understand to be the case. Mikenorton (talk) 23:14, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal
The editor who tagged this page with a proposal to merge Thermal history of the earth into Geological history of Earth did not provide a forum for discussion, so I'll provide it.

''I am not too familiar with this subject matter, but the editor who proposed a CSD seemed to think that there was no new content in Thermal history of the earth that wasn't already covered in Geological history of Earth, which the CSD-proposing editor considered to be the same topic. When I read the Geological history of Earth article, I saw that there was plenty of new content in the Thermal history of the earth article, so proposed merging as an alternative. Also, I cannot comment on whether or not the two articles share the same subject matter because I am not knowledgeable enough; I took the CSD-proposing editor's word for it.''  Gold   Standard  18:52, 5 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose - Thermal history of the earth has almost nothing to do with Geological history of Earth. The latter is a history of processes, such as glaciation and plate tectonics, that it is appropriate to organize by geological period. So far, Thermal history of the earth is about the physics of heat flow in the interior, and describes continuous processes that do not fit in such a temporal scheme. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RockMagnetist (talk • contribs) 18:49, 5 April 2013‎
 * Oppose Agree with foregoing opposition, practically in detail. JonRichfield (talk) 11:42, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Removed the merge tag from article as no support above and no reason given by proposer. Vsmith (talk) 13:21, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

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The Age of the Earth-Moon System can be calculate in two ways
One method is to utilize the cyclicity of extinction events as the Earth passes through each of the Eight arms of the Milky way Galaxy. The Earth and the Solar system are part of the Sagitarious Dwarf Galaxy, and the major extinction events occur when the Earth passes through the Crux Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy every 186.6 Million Years. Prior extinctions going backwards occurred at 66.043 and in approximately every 186.6 Million year interval in the past back to it birth in the Crux Arm of the Galaxy at 24 X 186.598 Ma + 66.043 = 4544.395 Ma without rounding. It would round to 4544.4 Ma.

A second method is to use the annual Average change in the distance between the center of the Earth and the center of the Moon as the Moon spirals away from the Earth. If you remember those crazy things called limit statements, In the Limit as the change in the time approaches really big numbers in Billions, the change in the system dwindles so it become ever closer and closer to 1 over the age of the system. In this case, because it is an Average, there is a 2 in the denominator, so the change is 1 over 2 times the age of the system. It is a triple proportionality where the change in the Age divided by 2 times the age is proportional to change in the distance divided by the distance, which is also proportional to the change in the mass of the system dived by the mass of the system. All three equal 1 divided by 9.0888 parts per Billion. Dividing by 2 gives one part in 4.5444 E 9 Years which equals 4544.4 Million Years.

The Movement of the Moon away from the Earth is about 20.8 millimeters per year, and change in the mass is about 10^15 kg per year which seems high until you realize there is nearly 6 x 10^24 kg in the system. The change adds 1.03 kg to each square meter of the Earth's surface. This works out to be about 1/3 of 1 millimeter of added thickness per year.

One note here is that the summation of all of the forces created by the Earth's tides sums to zero, so the slowing of Earth's rotation is due to mass gain, and internal mass redistributions. Denser materials migrate toward the core, and less dense materials move toward the surface of the Earth. We started with about 9 hour Earth Days, now they have slowed to almost 24 hours per Earth day. It is not a smooth process, as this is the second time the Earth has slowed to 24 hours, it has also speeded up in the past to 22 hours.

Anyway, by two methods, the Age of the Earth-Moon System is about 4544.40 Ma. 98.245.216.62 (talk) 02:18, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Using the Earth and Moon to get a better age for the System
You can use the Change in the distance between the Earth and the Moon to get a better estimate of the Age of the System. The Change in the distance divided by the distance is Proportional to the Change in the Mass of the System divided by the Mass of the System, which is also proportional to the Change in the Age of the System divided by 2 times the Age of the System. The Number in the denominator is 9.0888 E 9. Cut it in half and get 4.5444 E 9 or 4544.4 Million years. There is a slight error because the Mass of the Earth is only 81.3 times the mass of the Moon, so The total mass is 82.3 Lunar Masses. The Earth gets 81.3 / 82.3 of the total, and the Moon gets 1 / 82.3 of the total. The Changing Mass of the Earth Accelerates the Moon to a Higher Orbit at a longer distance, and it also decelerates itself to a slower speed at a lower orbit. The Moon also tries to Accelerate the Earth to a Higher Orbit, and tries to decelerate itself to a lower orbit, but it is outmatched by it bigger friend. Anyway, if you divide the Mass of the Earth at 5.97352 X 10^ 24 kg by 9.0888 E 9, you get 6.5834 E 14 kg per year. If you divide 5.97352 E 24 by 4.5444 E 9 you get close to 1.1 E 15 kg per year. The Surface area is 5.1 E 14 square meters. So 1.1 E 15 divided by 5.1 E 14 = 2.157 kg per square meter per year. How thick is this layer ? Water is around 1000 kg per cubic meter, and land is around 2650 to 2700 kg per cubic meter. so 2.157 kg divided by 2700 kg is just under 0.0008 meters, which is a mere 0.8 mm per year per square meter of surface area. In short it is a layer of space dust about 0.8 mm thick. So why do we not notice this. It is simply washed away and ends up in the creeks, rivers, and eventually in the bottom of the oceans. 71 % of it lands on the Oceans to start with, and the other 29 % is added by rainfall washing it into the oceans. So where can you see it. It actually gradually makes you Lawn taller over lots of years. So every 32 Years it makes your Lawn 1 inch taller when compared to your driveway, or sidewalk. You actually speed up the process by adding fertilizer to your lawn, or where wind blows dust around, it grows taller faster. 24.9.221.181 (talk) 05:13, 14 July 2024 (UTC)