I came across the history of Earth, in terms of geological time, on a 12-inch ruler today. I thought there would be a similar thing for those of us who use centimetres rather than inches… But no!
So, I present to you – the history of Earth in geological time on a 30cm ruler! You’ll never look at the classic and ubiquitous piece of stationary the same way again 😉
Click on it to bring up a larger image to read the text…
Original source (12-inch version): https://mikefarinha.wordpress.com/2006/09/27/a-brief-history-of-the-earth/
Since all GCSE Geography students need to know about the ‘Quaternary Period’ (section 16 of the DfE’s GCSE Geography content requirements), using the trusty 30cm ruler to demonstrate what that actually looks like in geological time is very useful.
If you’re on the look-out for visualisations that attempt to contextualise geological time in a way that is comprehensible to a human lifetime, try these:
