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.
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5 comments:

  1. Callan Bentley29 September, 2011 22:53

    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?)

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  2. P Hughes29 September, 2011 23:55

    Oklo natural nuclear reactor

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  3. CWCarrigan30 September, 2011 02:28

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

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  4. C W Magee30 September, 2011 10:33

    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.

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  5. Emily J. Chin01 October, 2011 11:32

    the first burrowing animals

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