It takes our sun 220 million years to orbit around the middle of our home galaxy. But that kind of timescale can be difficult to picture. So, using the International Stratigraphy Chart as a guidance for what different time periods mean in terms of millions of years, let's zoom out to the scale of a galactic year and see what happened in Earth's prehistory one cycle ago, two and so on.
Sources for this episode:
- Bach, J. R. (2013), Paradigm paralysis in the management of neuromuscular disease. Journal of Personalized Medicine 11: 24-29.
- Bottjer, E. J. (2005), The Early Evolution of Animals. Scientific American 293(2): 42-47.
- Brusatte, S. L., Butler, R. J., Barrett, P. M., Carrion, M. T., Evans, D. C., Lloyd, G. T., Mannion, P. D., Norell, M. A., Peppe, D. J., Upchurch, P. and Williamson, T. E. (2015), The extinction of the dinosaurs. Biological Reviews 90: 628-642.
- Cameron, G. G. (1968), Zoroaster the Herdsman. Indo-Iranian Journal 10(4): 261-281.
- Clack, J. A. (2006), Devonian climate change, breathing, and the origin of the tetrapod stem group. Integrative and Comparative Biology 47(4): 510-523.
- Cohen, K. M., Finney, S. C., Gibbard, P. L. and Fan, J.-X. (2013; updated). The ICS International Chronostratigraphic Chart. Episodes 36: 199-204.
- Downs, J. P., Daeschler, E. B., Jenkins, F. A. and Shubin, N. H. (2008), The cranial endoskeleton of Tiktaalik roseae. Nature 455: 925-929.
- Ellery, A. (2003), Book Review: Impossible Extinction- Natural catastrophes and the supremacy of the microbial world. International Journal of Astrobiology 2(2): 153-154.
- Galway-Whitham, J. and Stringer, G. (2018), How did Homo sapiens evolve? Science 360(6395): 1296-1298.
- Hazen, R. M. (2010), How Old is Earth, and How Do We Know? Evolution: Education and Outreach 3: 198-205.
- Hess, F. L. (1925), The Age of the Earth. The Scientific Monthly 20(6): 597-602.
- Kemp, B. and Zink, A. (2012), Life in Ancient Egypt: Akhenaten, the Amarna Period and Tutankhamun. RCC Perspectives No. 3- Sickness, Hunger, War and Religion: Multidisciplinary Perspectives: 9-24.
- Kvĕt, R. (1991), Complete Periodical Geological Time Table. GeoJournal 24(4): 417-420.
- Kvĕt, R. (1995), On the Dependence of Life Evolution on Geotectonic Stages. GeoJournal 37(4): 413-417.
- Lemberg, J. B., Daeschler, E. B. and Shubin, N. H. (2021), The feeding system of Tiktaalik roseae: an intermediate between suction feeding and biting. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118(7): e2016421118.
- MacIver, M. A., Schmitz, L., Mutan U., Murphey, T. D. and Mobley, C. D. (2020), Massive increase in visual range preceded the origin of terrestrial vertebrates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America: E2375-E2384.
- Meiri, S. (2022), Population sizes of T. rex cannot be precisely estimated. Frontiers of Biogeography 14(2): e53781.
- Roney, J. C. (2017), 1776, Viewed from the West. Journal of the Early Republic 37(4): 655-700.
- Sereno, P. C. (1997), The Origin and Evolution of Dinosaurs. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 25: 435-489.
- Vandepoele, K., De Vos, W., Taylor, J. S., Meyer, A. and Van de Peer, Y. (2004), Major events in the genome evolution of vertebrates: Paranome age and size differ considerably between ray-finned fishes and land vertebrates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 101(6): 1638-1643.
- Vittinghof, F. (1985), Reviewed Work(s): The Roman Empire 27 B. C. - A. D. 476. A Study in Survival by Chester G. Starr. Gnomon 57 Bd., H. 6: 572-574.
- Zhuralev, A. Y. and Wood, R. A. (2018), The two phases of the Cambrian Explosion. Scientific Reports 8: 16656.
- Życiński, J. (2006), Ethics in medical technologies: The Roman Catholic viewpoint. Journal of Clinical Neuroscience 13: 518-523.
