Favorite geological time period?

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by Facial, Jul 22, 2004.

  1. Facial Valued Senior Member

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    Choose any era, period, or epoch in earth's history that you would like to be transported into if you had the option to do so.


    I'd choose the Carboniferous Period of the Paleozoic Era, circa 300000000 BCE. I like plants and trees; it'd be nice to find yourself surrounded by funky gymnosperms that look extremely different from today's stereotypical pine tree.
     
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  3. Hypercane Sustained Winds at Mach One Registered Senior Member

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    Most likely, I'd choose the Cryptozoic Era. Start at the Hadeon period and speeding up time by a million years per second and end at the end of the Proterazoic period. It would be such a treat for me to watch the earth "evolve". Thats spanning 2300 million years and the show would last about 38 minutes and 20 seconds.
     
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  5. Starthane Xyzth returns occasionally... Valued Senior Member

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    Oooh... hard to say.

    Probably the Pleistocene, about 100,000 to 300,000 years ago, during one of the interglacials. All the mammalian megafauna would still be around, the Earth would be at the height of its biological splendour, and there'd be early Cro-Magnon humans to talk to as well.

    What I'd do would be try to civilize them, to start a Neolithic Age - or even a Bronze Age a thousand centuries early. See if I could bring about civilization without losing all the most spectacular wildlife, which we have been deprived of.
     
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  7. Facial Valued Senior Member

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    Nice.
     
  8. vslayer Registered Senior Member

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    the information age

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    more like the misinformation age with all the american influence

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  9. Facial Valued Senior Member

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    Ah, the Cenozoic Era? Or just the holocene epoch?
     
  10. Starthane Xyzth returns occasionally... Valued Senior Member

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    I think he means he'd prefer to remain in the present time, with our all-pervading Internet and IT-obsessed culture.

    Rather easy, actually!
     
  11. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, now is the best of all times with everything we have that makes life easy for those who are in the right places.
     
  12. Facial Valued Senior Member

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    Is the information age really a geological period? Maybe it deserves to be.
     
  13. Starthane Xyzth returns occasionally... Valued Senior Member

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    I don't suppose you could define it as such, since (a) it's been far too brief thus far, by a factor of about a million; (b) there are no characteristic large-scale geological structures currently forming which are unique to the information age. Humanity has reworked much of the Earth's land surface, of course - but for much longer than the last 10 or 20 years, which are when IT has really come into its own.

    I wonder if manmade modern landforms - urban complexes, farmland and irrigation systems, roads, landfills, slag heaps etc. - will form significant geological strata in a few tens of millions of years' time?
     
  14. Hypercane Sustained Winds at Mach One Registered Senior Member

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    Right now were in the Holocene Epoch of the Quarternary Period. Holocene meaning "completely recent" is referring to the last 10,000 years. The Holocene Epoch was marked by the beginning of the interstadial, which are temporary warm periods between glaciations. And it is also marked by the start of human activites upon the environment and other species of animals. It is also the age in where humans took their dominant role on this planet.
     
  15. Hypercane Sustained Winds at Mach One Registered Senior Member

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    I am actually looking forward to the Technozoic Era.

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  16. Andre Registered Senior Member

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    Actually I though it was 11,570 years ago when almost all proxies jumped from the Younger Dryas into the Pre Boreal. I would vote for that particular moment.
     
  17. Hypercane Sustained Winds at Mach One Registered Senior Member

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    Its an exaggerated time.

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    Close enough though.
     
  18. npz Registered Member

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    Neohadean Era...as per the book "Life and Death of Planet Earth" by Peter Ward, the final result of the world - about billions of years from now.
     
  19. Hypercane Sustained Winds at Mach One Registered Senior Member

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    Wow. Sounds interesting.
     
  20. Norman Atta Boy Registered Senior Member

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    I leave that day blank on my calendar...........If you're still around though, a daily update on the hot earth would be appreciated!

    Yob Atta

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  21. Starthane Xyzth returns occasionally... Valued Senior Member

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    Sounds depressing. To see the way Earth will probably end up in this NeoHadean Era, just look at Venus today...
     
  22. Facial Valued Senior Member

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    Venus? How???
     
  23. Starthane Xyzth returns occasionally... Valued Senior Member

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    Well... as the Sun grows hotter, Earth's biological thermostat will be overwhelmed and, eventually, the oceans will evaporate faster than atmospheric water vapour can condense. An atmosphere laden with steam will produce a highly efficient wet greenhouse, further increasing the surface temperature and driving the carbonates out of the rocks: Earth probably has at least as much CO2 as Venus, but currently bound up in minerals. This becomes a runaway positive feedback loop.

    End result: the oceans boil dry, the atmosphere becomes a dense, reducing heat trap and the surface temperature stabilizes at several hundred Centrigrade.
     

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