HI 399 Uncovering Earth’s Deep History

Earth’s history has been incomprehensibly long and action-packed! Over the course of deep time, our planet has been the stage for countless extinct animals, like dinosaurs and mastodons. It has been witness to dramatic climate change, including global ice ages. It has endured titanic disruptions, such as colliding continental plates and catastrophic impacts with extra-terrestrial objects.

In the short term, it has also been the home for humanity, including chronologists, Biblical scholars, historians, natural philosophers, and scientists, many of whom have been curious to plumb its mysteries and understand their meanings. How has Earth’s age been calculated? How were distant geological events discovered? How was evidence for events in the distant past collected and interpreted? What kind of people have sought to reconstruct Earth’s deep history, and why?