Thursday, September 29, 2011

Early Earth awesomeness and middle Earth magic

One of the problems with making illustrated linear geologic timescales is that the middle 80% of the timescale generally looks fairly boring. Of course, all sorts of things were happening in the Archean and Proterozoic, but they ren't always as easy to sketch cartoons of as a trilobite. I'm currently doodling a cartoon illustrated timescale, and I was wondering. do any of you have any favorite Precambrian events that can take up the timeline space that would otherwise be white? If so, and you don't mind me stealing your favorites, please share.

5 comments:

Callan Bentley said...

Compaction and differentiation
Deposition of banded iron formations
Sudbury impact
Crystallization of Jack Hills zircons
Formation of oceans and atmosphere
Snowball earth glaciation(s)
First life
First stromatolites
First eukaryotes
First metazoans
Various orogenies (Wopmay? Grenville?)
Various rifting events (Keeweenawan? Iapetan?)

P Hughes said...

Oklo natural nuclear reactor

CWCarrigan said...

I second early stromatolites, snowball earth, grenville/rodinia accretion & rifting, banded iron formations, & sudbury impact.

C W Magee said...

As a Gondwanan, I scoff at your suggestions that the Grenville is a significant tectonic event. Every marsupial knows that the big Proterozoic orogeny was the Neoproterozoic Braziliano/Pan-African.

Emily J. Chin said...

the first burrowing animals