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Historical geology. Historical geology or palaeogeology is a discipline that uses the principles and methods of geology to reconstruct the geological history of Earth. [ 1] Historical geology examines the vastness of geologic time, measured in billions of years, and investigates changes in the Earth, gradual and sudden, over this deep time.
The geologic time scale is a way of representing deep time based on events that have occurred throughout Earth's history, a time span of about 4.54 ± 0.05 Ga (4.54 billion years). [ 5] It chronologically organises strata, and subsequently time, by observing fundamental changes in stratigraphy that correspond to major geological or ...
The geological history of the Earth follows the major geological events in Earth's past based on the geological time scale, a system of chronological measurement based on the study of the planet's rock layers ( stratigraphy ). Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left ...
In 1741 the best-known institution in the field of natural history, the National Museum of Natural History in France, created the first teaching position designated specifically for geology. [19] This was an important step in further promoting knowledge of geology as a science and in recognizing the value of widely disseminating such knowledge.
The history of Earth is divided into four great eons, starting 4,540 mya with the formation of the planet. Each eon saw the most significant changes in Earth's composition, climate and life. Each eon is subsequently divided into eras, which in turn are divided into periods, which are further divided into epochs . Eon.
Geologic time is the timescale used to calculate dates in the planet's geologic history from its origin (currently estimated to have been some 4,600 million years ago) to the present day. Radiometric dating measures the steady decay of radioactive elements in an object to determine its age. It is used to calculate dates for the older part of ...
Geochronology. An artistic depiction of the major events in the history of Earth. Geochronology is the science of determining the age of rocks, fossils, and sediments using signatures inherent in the rocks themselves. Absolute geochronology can be accomplished through radioactive isotopes, whereas relative geochronology is provided by tools ...
Geology (from Ancient Greek γῆ (gê) 'earth' and λoγία ( -logía) 'study of, discourse') [ 1 ][ 2 ] is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which they are composed, and the processes by which they change over time. [ 3 ]