Background Essay: Deep Time

To understand evolution, humans must think in units of time much larger than those we use to define our lives. After all, evolutionary change occurs too slowly to be measured in days, months, or years. Instead, it's documented in layers upon layers of rock deposited over the course of 4.6 billion years.

The earth has been significantly altered during this time by climate swings, volcanism, drifting continents, and other "earth shattering" events. These dynamic conditions, in turn, have influenced every living thing that has inhabited the planet. Because of this, biology alone cannot fully explain the evolution of life on our planet. It's necessary to include the physical sciences -- geology, chemistry, and physics -- in order to understand the conditions in which life arose and evolved.

The story of life is told primarily by its victims. Scientists say that only one in a thousand species that have ever lived survives today. The other 99.9 percent are extinct, gone forever. With few exceptions, the lifespan of individual species is short by geological standards, on average between 2 and 10 million years. No matter how well adapted a creature is to its environment, history has shown that even the most dominant can be wiped away. Ironically, extinction is a springboard to other life. Even in the most catastrophic of events, species survive and continue to evolve, often filling niches left by the victims.

Extinction is by and large a natural process in which species, groups, and even whole families of organisms disappear. Background extinctions, which are ongoing throughout the history of life, eliminate one family every million years or so. The more destructive and relatively sudden kind of extinction -- the mass extinction event -- is caused by environmental influences and has a global impact on diversity. All extinctions identified in this timeline are mass extinction events.

The geologic time scale we use to study the history of the earth and of it life forms is commonly referred to as "deep time," and it's a concept perhaps as difficult to conceive as deep space. Can humans measure deep time? Yes. Will we ever truly comprehend such immensity of time? Probably not. But to develop a better understanding of evolutionary change in its proper historical context, we must try. This timeline provides a framework for doing so.