Geologic Time Scale

• Similar to the period table we organize these events into a table or timeline we call the Geologic time scale. It is huge and stretches over all of Earth's years. 

• The Earth is believed to be about 4.6 Billion Years Old we need somewhere to organize all of this time which is why scientists use the Geologic Time Scale.

​Eon, Era, Period, Epoch

• ​The Geographic time scale HAS to be organized, therefore we organize it by dividing them into fractions of time (Some are larger then others).

​Uniformitarianism

• Earth is about 4.6 Billion years old

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• ​The principle of uniformitarianism states that geologic events (Like mountain building or erosion) that happened in the past can be explained by current geologic events.

• Summarized: Its the idea that Earth's features are always changing and the present is an indication to what happened in the past.

​Gradualism

• ​Gradualism shows that fossils change very slowly over time.

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• Many fossils show that many present day organisms possess similar features to their past ancestors.

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• ​Brontosaurus

​Giraffe

​Catastrophism

• ​the theory that changes in the earth's crust during geological history have resulted chiefly from sudden violent and unusual events.

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Examples:

• ​Meteor Impacts (Dinosaur Extinction)

• Ice Age​

• Hurricanes, Tornados, ​Blizzards, Droughts

• MASS EXTINCTION​

You will need to come up with one example of gradualism, catastrophism, ad uniformitarianism and place it onto the paper.

This can not be an example I have spoken about or had in the slides. If you use a specific event you need to specify the year.