The history of life in a single year
The history of life in a single year
Geological time spans billions of years, and includes the history of all life on this planet. By studying fossils, we have learnt more about the history of the Earth and the organisms that have inhabited it.
The Earth was formed about four and a half billion years ago (that's four and half thousand million years), and complex life, like animals and plants appeared about 550 million years ago.
One easy way of looking at huge length of geological time is by translating it into one year - at this scale an average human lifespan is just one and a quarter seconds.
Ediacaran sea floor, Namibia, Southwest Africa - 543 million years ago. Image: Mighty Fossils
What happens if we represent the last 4,500,000,000 years as just one year?
The Earth and the rest of the solar system is formed on New Year's Day.
It wouldn't be until late November that we saw the first animals with hard parts.
The first tetrapods (animals with four legs) appeared on land on the first day of December.
The dinosaurs died out in a mass extinction that occurred on Boxing Day.
Human beings appeared at about 11.35pm on the evening of the last day of the year.
Stonehenge was built about thirty seconds before midnight.
And our Museum was opened in the last second of the year!
