timeline

Timeline of Earth’s History

Part 1: Making the Timeline and Marking Events

• 1. Cut a strip of paper that is 4.6 meters long.

  2. Familiarize yourself with the conversions:

  3. 1 meter = 1 billion years (= 1000 million years)

  4. 1 millimeter = 1 million years

  5. Mark "Then" on the left end of the strip and "Now" on the right end of the strip

  6. Put your group’s names on the back side of the "Now" end.

  7. Mark where each of the events on the list below occurred.

  8. Hint: start with the most recent event first, and measure from the "Now" end

Part 2: Marking the Eras on the Timeline:

Next, you will be marking the 4 eras of Earth’s history.

• 1. Starting at the "now" end of your timeline, measure back (towards "then") 65 mm (6.5 cm). Label this area the Cenozioc era. It contains 2 periods.

  2. Starting at the mark you just made, measure back (towards "then") another 160 mm (= 16 cm). Label this area the Mesozoic era. It contains 3 periods.

  3. Starting at the mark you just made, measure back (towards "then") another 345 mm (= 34.5 cm). Label this area the Paleozoic era. It contains 6 periods.

  4. The remaining length of the timeline represents the Precambrian era — it’s the longest one by far — science hasn’t named any periods in this era.

Part 3: Label Eras, Draw Organisms, and Describe Major Events

In the Bobcat book, pages 179 to 196 should be your best friend for this part!

• 1. In each section you just created, draw a few examples of the types of organisms that existed during that era. For the Cenozoic era, draw small pictures because you don’t have much space.

  2. Shade in each area in different color (except Precambrian because there is too much to shade in)

  3. Write the most important event(s) that happened during that era as well — it should be fairly full now (except, of course, the Precambrian era which has lots of room)!

Grading:

This is how the 10 points for this project will be allocated