Geological Time Scale

Few discussions in geology can occur without reference to geologic

time. Geologic time is often dicussed in two forms:
 Relative time ("chronostratic") -- subdivisions of the Earth's
geology in a specific order based upon relative age relationships
(most commonly, vertical/stratigraphic position). These
subdivisions are given names, most of which can be recognized
globally, usually on the basis of fossils.
 Absolute time ("chronometric") -- numerical ages in "millions
of years" or some other measurement. These are most
commonly obtained via radiometric dating methods performed
on appropriate rock types.
 Radiometric Dating
 Rocks are made up of many individual crystals, and each crystal
is usually made up of at least several different chemical elements
such as iron, magnesium, silicon, etc. Most of the elements in
nature are stable and do not change. However, some elements
are not completely stable in their natural state. Some of the
atoms eventually change from one element to another by a
process called radioactive decay. If there are a lot of atoms of
the original element, called the parent element, the atoms decay
to another element, called the daughter element, at a predictable
rate. The passage of time can be charted by the reduction in the
number of parent atoms, and the increase in the number of
daughter atoms
 The Radiometric Clocks
 There are now well over forty different radiometric
dating techniques, each based on a different radioactive
isotope.
 The term isotope subdivides elements into groups of atoms that
have the same atomic weight. For example carbon has isotopes of
weight 12, 13, and 14 times the mass of a nucleon, referred to
as carbon-12, carbon-13, or carbon-14 (abbreviated as 12C,
13C, 14C). It is only the carbon-14 isotope that is radioactive.
 Some Naturally Occurring Radioactive Isotopes and their half-lives
Radioactive Isotope Product Half-Life
(Parent) (Daughter) (Years)
Samarium-147 Neodymium-143 106 billion
Rubidium-87 Strontium-87 48.8 billion
Rhenium-187 Osmium-187 42 billion
Lutetium-176 Hafnium-176 38 billion
Thorium-232 Lead-208 14 billion
Uranium-238 Lead-206 4.5 billion
Potassium-40 Argon-40 1.26 billion
Uranium-235 Lead-207 0.7 billion
Beryllium-10 Boron-10 1.52 million
Chlorine-36 Argon-36 300,000
Carbon-14 Nitrogen-14 5715
Uranium-234 Thorium-230 248,000
Thorium-230 Radium-226 75,400
The table below gives the ages, in billions of years, from twelve different studies using five different
techniques on one particular rock formation in Western Greenland, the Amitsoq gneisses.
Technique Age Range (billion years)
uranium-lead 3.60±0.05
lead-lead 3.56±0.10
lead-lead 3.74±0.12
lead-lead 3.62±0.13
rubidium-strontium 3.64±0.06
rubidium-strontium 3.62±0.14
rubidium-strontium 3.67±0.09
rubidium-strontium 3.66±0.10
rubidium-strontium 3.61±0.22
rubidium-strontium 3.56±0.14
lutetium-hafnium 3.55±0.22
samarium-neodymium 3.56±0.20
(compiled from Dalrymple, 1991
A schematic representation of the uranium-238 decay chain, showing the
longest-lived nuclides. Half-lives are given in each box. Solid arrows represent
direct decay, while dashed arrows indicate that there are one or more
intermediate decays, with the longest intervening half-life given below the
arrow.
The Age of the Earth
 How old is the Earth?
 4.6 billion years (4,600,000,000 years)

 Radiometric dating (Uranium, Thorium). Mass

spectrometer
Early ideas of the age of the Earth:
 1654 Archbishop Usher (Ireland), genealogy in
Bible
Earth was created October 26, 4004 BC, 9:00
am
Earth was 6000 years old. Led to the Doctrine
of Catastrophism:
Earth was shaped by series of giant disasters.
Had to fit many processes into a short time
scale.
 1770's, 1780's "Revolution"
James Hutton, Father of Geology (Scotland) 1726-1797.
Published Theory of the Earth in 1785. Hadrian's Wall built by
Romans, after 1500 years no change. Suspected that Earth was
much older.
 Slow processes shape earth.
Mountains arise continuously as a balance against erosion and
weathering
Doctrine of Uniformitarianism: "Present is key to the past".
The physical and chemical laws that govern nature are uniform
Unconformity at Siccar Point, Scotland
"No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end"
 How old is Earth?
Quantitative scientific methods
 In 1897, Lord Kelvin assumed that the Earth was originally molten and
calculated a date based on cooling through conduction and radiation.
Age of Earth was calculated to be about 24-40 million years. Problem: Earth
has an internal heat source (radioactive decay)
 In 1899 - 1901, John Joly (Irish) calculated the rate of delivery of salt to
the ocean. River water has only a small concentration of salts. Rivers flow to
the sea. Evaporative concentration of salts. Age of Ocean = Total salt in
oceans (in grams) divided by rate of salt added (grams per year)
Age of Earth was calculated to be 90-100 million years.
Problems: no way to account for recycled salt, salt incorporated into clay
minerals, salt deposits.
 Thickness of total sedimentary record divided by average sedimentation
rates (in mm/yr). In 1860, calculated to be about 3 million years old. In 1910,
calculated to be about 1.6 billion years old. Early measurements of maximum
thickness of sediment ranged from 25,000 m to 112,000 m. With more recent
mapping, thickness of fossiliferous rocks is at least 150,000 m.
Sedimentation rates average about 0.3 m/1000 years.
At this rate, the age of the first fossiliferous rocks is about 500 million years.
Problems: did not account for past erosion or differences in sedimentation
rates; also ancient sedimentary rocks are metamorphosed or melted.
 Charles Lyell 1800's compared amount of evolution shown by marine
mollusks in the various series of the Tertiary System with the amount
that had occurred since the beginning of the Pleistocene. Estimated 80
million years for the Cenozoic alone.
 Discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896. In 1905, Rutherford and
Boltwood used radioactive decay to measure the age of rocks and minerals. Uranium
decay produces He, leading to a date of 500 million years. In 1907, Boltwood
suspected that lead was the stable end product of the decay of uranium. Published the
age of a sample of urananite based on Uranium-Lead dating. Date was 1.64 billion
years.
So far, oldest dated Earth rocks are 3.96 billion years.
Older rocks include meteorites and moon rocks with dates on the order of 4.6
billion years.
Moon rocks, highland ~ 4.5 by, mare basalt ~ 3.2 - 3.8 by
Meteorites - older than 4.5 by
Mass spectrograph was used after WWI (1918). Led to the discovery of over 200
isotopes.
Many radioactive elements can be used as geologic clocks. Each element decays at its
own nearly constant rate. Once this decay rate is known, geologists can estimate the
length of time over which decay has been occurring by measuring the amount of
radioactive parent and the amount of stable daughter elements.
Example: Potassium-Argon dating.
 Why is the Earth younger than the
moon and meteorites?
 Earth is geologically active.
 Has a hot, molten interior.
 Rocks are remelted and their internal clocks are reset.

 Also, rocks on Earth's surface are acted on by erosion and

weathering. Rocks on Earth surface are not as old as the Earth,
they are "recycled" rock materials
Rocks broken down into sediment (gravel, sand, silt, clay).
Sediment will turn into sedimentary rock over time. Older rocks
are buried deeply under younger rocks.
 Where do we find
the oldest rocks on Earth?
Canadian Shield. (NW Territories near Great Slave Lake, 3.96 by).
Gneiss.
Narrows the gap between origin of Earth and first rocks to 640 million years.
(Geotimes 12/1989). Before this, oldest rocks known were from Isukasia
region of Greenland (3.8 by).
Glaciers 2 miles thick scraped off young recycled rocks.
Land rose 250 ft since ice was removed => more erosion.
Isostasy
Very old rocks are at the surface in the Canadian Shield area.
Up to about 3.8 or 3.96 billion years old.
Multicellular life did not appear until about 1 billion years ago.
Before this, 3 billion years ago single celled life only.
Hard parts like shells don't appear until 600 million years ago. (Trilobites)
Earth's First 3.7 Billion Years
I. IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS A
SINGULARITY.
At first there was just Hydrogen. The Hydrogen
condensed into billions of local large balls of
superdense Hydrogen in which fusion reactions
forming Helium began and stars were born. Other
elements up to the atomic weight of Iron were
produced in these stars.
About 5 to 6 billion years ago. One of these stars
began to run out of Hydrogen fuel. It expanded to a
red giant and then collapsed on itself and exploded
in a supernova. In this supernova, like billions that
have occurred elsewhere in our Universe, all of the
other elements were created.
II. The mass of new matter again collapsed into a
disk shape mass of dust and gas (a). The center
became superheated and formed a new star, our
sun (b). From this disk of matter the planets
began to condense (c), according to the widely
supported nebular hypothesis of Immanuel
Kant and Pierre-Simon Laplace. The two
strongest points in favor of this idea are: 1) that
the disk began by rotating in one direction and
the rotation of all of the planets around the sun
follows the original disk; and 2) that because the
disk flattened out as time progresses, all of the
orbits of the planets (except Pluto) lie more or
less in the same plane (d). Pluto is possibly a
captured giant asteroid.
III. The earth condensed in four basic steps. 1) It began to
accrete from the nebular cloud as particles smashed into
each other forming so-called planetesimals. These in
turn collided with each other and as their mass grew
began to gather material from the nebular disk. 2) As
the mass of the Earth grew so did it's gravitational
force and the Earth began to compress itself into a
smaller and denser body. This happened about 4.5
billion years ago. 3) In the third step the compression
itself began to heat the interior of the Earth; also there
was heat generated by radioactive decay. The interior of
the earth began to melt. Because iron is the heaviest of
the common elements that make up the Earth, as the
Earth began to melt droplets of melted iron began to
sink towards the center of the earth, where they
condensed. 4) Proceeding slowly at first it sped up to
catastrophic proportions - hence it is called the iron
catastrophe. Note that 3 and 4 in the figures to the right are
cross sections.
 Earth Structure
Thickness Density P-wave velocity
Layer
(km) (g/cm³ ) (km/sec)
Continental crust avg. 35 2.6 - 2.8 6
Oceanic crust 5 - 12 3.0 - 3.5 7
Mohorovicic discontinuity (Moho)
Mantle 2885 4.5 - 10 8 - 12
Gutenberg discontinuity
Core (average) 3470 10.7 or 12 -
Outer core
2250 - 8 - 10
(liquid)
Inner core
1220 13.5 11 - 12
(solid)
IV. However, the crust finally solidified by about 3.7 billion years
ago. Gasses pouring out of volcanoes and fissures, along with
lava, began to accumulate, perhaps added to by the impact of a
few giant comets (which are mostly gas).

The gases that accumulated were those we still find coming out
of volcanoes:
Water vapor (H2O)
Hydrogen chloride (HCl)
Carbon Monoxide (CO)
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
Nitrogen (N2)

These gases combined to form:

Methane (CH4)
Ammonia (NH4)
Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN)
V. As the crust cooled water would condense and accumulate as
oceans. This happened very soon after the crust solidified.

VI. LIFE EVOLVES

The origin of life is shrouded in mystery. But there have been
significant steps towards some understanding.
Making many complex organic molecules is the first step, but
apparently not a difficult one.
This was shown in the famous Miller-Urey experiments done in
the 1950's.
They planned to set up an experiment to see how complex
organic molecules could be produced. Basically they mixed
together gasses that they thought the primitive Earth would have
in a jar and zapped the gases with an electrical spark. Complex
organic good collected at the bottom of the jar. Included were
amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. But no life.
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