10.9Deep time
Earth's history as one long scroll. Numbers like 4,567 million years ago are too big to feel, so this page turns them into distance. Scroll from the formation of the Earth to today and the length of the page is the lesson: where things happen, and how much nothing there is in between.
- 1Read
The scroll below is Earth's history drawn to one scale: every million years is 10 pixels, so the whole thing is 45,670 pixels long, about 57 phone screens. It starts 4,567 million years ago and ends now. Scroll at your own pace; the counter at the top tells you when you are and how much of Earth's history has passed. The long empty stretches are meant to be empty.
Short of time? Jump ahead, and the page says how much you skipped.
- 2Scroll
The present is a hairline. The next step zooms in on it.
NoteThe dinosaurs turn up 94.6% of the way down. The first confirmed animals only arrive at 87.5%: for most of the scroll there are none at all. Our own species takes the last 3.1 pixels. Everything ever written, from the first tablets to this page, fits in the last 0.05 pixels: less than a single dot on any screen.
Most of Earth's history is microbes, rock and water. The bit with anything you would recognise is a short stretch at the bottom.
- 3Zoom
Now zoom in on the end of the scroll. Each stop of the dial shows a window that ends now, about a third as long as the one before, drawn at the same height. The dial is logarithmic; within each window, time is still linear. On the axis, Ma means millions of years ago and ka thousands of years ago.
- Share of Earth's history
- 100%
- Length on the scroll
- 45,670 px
- Events inside
- 16
- 4List
The same events as a plain list, oldest first, each with its source.
Earth forms
The chart starts Earth's history, the Hadean eon, 4,567 million years ago. The top of this page is that moment. Source: International Commission on Stratigraphy, International Chronostratigraphic Chart, v2026/06 (Cohen, Harper, Gibbard and Car, Episodes 48: 105 to 115, updated June 2026)
The Moon
Zircon crystals brought back by Apollo 14 show the Moon's crust had formed by 4.51 billion years ago, within about 60 million years of the solar system's birth. Source: Melanie Barboni and colleagues, Early formation of the Moon 4.51 billion years ago, Science Advances 3(1), 2017
Signs of life
Stromatolites and other microbial traces in hot-spring rocks of the Dresser Formation, Western Australia: some of Earth's earliest convincing evidence of life. Source: Tara Djokic and colleagues, Earliest signs of life on land preserved in ca. 3.5 Ga hot spring deposits, Nature Communications 8, 2017
Oxygen
The Great Oxidation Event begins: the first significant build-up of oxygen in the air. Source: Ashley Gumsley and colleagues, Timing and tempo of the Great Oxidation Event, PNAS 114(8), 2017
First animals
The Ediacara biota, the first large complex organisms in the rocks, appear. Chemical traces show one of them, Dickinsonia, was an animal: the oldest confirmed large one. Source: Ilya Bobrovskiy and colleagues, Ancient steroids establish the Ediacaran fossil Dickinsonia as one of the earliest animals, Science 361(6408), 2018
The Cambrian
The Cambrian period begins, and with it the Phanerozoic, the eon we still live in. Source: International Commission on Stratigraphy, International Chronostratigraphic Chart, v2026/06 (Cohen, Harper, Gibbard and Car, Episodes 48: 105 to 115, updated June 2026)
The Great Dying
The end-Permian extinction, the most severe loss of life in the sea and on land in the last 542 million years. It took about 60,000 years. Source: Seth Burgess, Samuel Bowring and Shu-zhong Shen, High-precision timeline for Earth's most severe extinction, PNAS 111(9), 2014
Dinosaurs
The first dinosaurs, as life recovers from the extinction. For more than ten million years they stay a minor group. Source: Massimo Bernardi and colleagues, Dinosaur diversification linked with the Carnian Pluvial Episode, Nature Communications 9, 2018
Dinosaurs take over
After the Carnian Pluvial Episode, a swing from dry to wet climate and back, dinosaurs diversify explosively. Their footprints appear exactly then. Source: Massimo Bernardi and colleagues, Dinosaur diversification linked with the Carnian Pluvial Episode, Nature Communications 9, 2018
The asteroid
The Chicxulub impact and the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, which ends the age of the giant dinosaurs. Dating puts the two within 32,000 years of each other. Source: Paul Renne and colleagues, Time scales of critical events around the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, Science 339(6120), 2013
Our genus
A jaw from Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia: the earliest known member of the genus Homo. Source: Brian Villmoare and colleagues, Early Homo at 2.8 Ma from Ledi-Geraru, Afar, Ethiopia, Science 347(6228), 2015
Homo sapiens
Fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco: the oldest yet reported for our own species. Source: Daniel Richter and colleagues, The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age, Nature 546, 2017
The Holocene
The current epoch begins, 11,700 years ago. Source: International Commission on Stratigraphy, International Chronostratigraphic Chart, v2026/06 (Cohen, Harper, Gibbard and Car, Episodes 48: 105 to 115, updated June 2026)
Farming
After some 2,200 years of tending wild barley, lentils and peas at Chogha Golan, Iran, domesticated-type emmer wheat appears. Source: Simone Riehl, Mohsen Zeidi and Nicholas Conard, Emergence of agriculture in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran, Science 341(6141), 2013
Writing
The earliest cuneiform tablets in Mesopotamia date to about 3200 BC. Every written record of human history fits after this point. Source: University of Chicago Oriental Institute, on its exhibition Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond (UChicago News, 27 September 2010)
Now
- 5Go
Big numbers get easier with practice. Keep going.
10.9.1How the scroll works
Distance is time. The top of the scroll is 4,567 million years ago, the start of the Hadean eon on the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) chart, and every million years is 10 pixels further down, so the scroll is 45,670 pixels long. Every eon, era and period boundary and every event is placed by that rule from a date in the page's data file; none is placed by hand. Boundaries are the ICS chart's, v2026/06; a few, marked approximate on the chart, are still being refined.
Event dates come from the papers listed below, and many carry error bars of millions of years that a line on a scroll cannot show. Where a date is a range, the event sits at the older end. The events are a small, chosen sample: most of the history of life is left out, which is part of why the scroll looks so empty.
10.9.2Sources
- International Commission on Stratigraphy, International Chronostratigraphic Chart, v2026/06 (Cohen, Harper, Gibbard and Car, Episodes 48: 105 to 115, updated June 2026)
- Melanie Barboni and colleagues, Early formation of the Moon 4.51 billion years ago, Science Advances 3(1), 2017
- Tara Djokic and colleagues, Earliest signs of life on land preserved in ca. 3.5 Ga hot spring deposits, Nature Communications 8, 2017
- Ashley Gumsley and colleagues, Timing and tempo of the Great Oxidation Event, PNAS 114(8), 2017
- Ilya Bobrovskiy and colleagues, Ancient steroids establish the Ediacaran fossil Dickinsonia as one of the earliest animals, Science 361(6408), 2018
- Seth Burgess, Samuel Bowring and Shu-zhong Shen, High-precision timeline for Earth's most severe extinction, PNAS 111(9), 2014
- Massimo Bernardi and colleagues, Dinosaur diversification linked with the Carnian Pluvial Episode, Nature Communications 9, 2018
- Paul Renne and colleagues, Time scales of critical events around the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, Science 339(6120), 2013
- Brian Villmoare and colleagues, Early Homo at 2.8 Ma from Ledi-Geraru, Afar, Ethiopia, Science 347(6228), 2015
- Daniel Richter and colleagues, The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age, Nature 546, 2017
- Simone Riehl, Mohsen Zeidi and Nicholas Conard, Emergence of agriculture in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Iran, Science 341(6141), 2013
- University of Chicago Oriental Institute, on its exhibition Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond (UChicago News, 27 September 2010)