Ge

End of the drying up of the oceans: all the water that was on the surface is filtered in the subsoil and in the mantle which is no longer hot enough to re-emit it to the surface in the form of vapor. Even life in

The supercontinent Pangea Ultima is formed from the union of Austro-Antarctica-Eurafrasia and the Americas; the hypothesis is by Christopher Scotese

The Austro-Antarctica-Eurafrasia supercontinent is formed, from the union of Austro-Eurafrasia and Antartica

The supercontinent Austro-Eurafrasia is formed, from the union of Eurafrasia and Australia

The supercontinent Eurafrasia is formed, from the union of Africa, Europe and Asia

Big Island, Hawaii. The eruption of Kilauea, which had begun 35 years earlier, in January 1983, suddenly ends.

Evidence of meteorite impact is found as also causing the P-Tr extinction of 250MLN years ago; one proof is the “extraterrestrial” proportion of Helium and Argon in air bubbles in rocks of that epoch found in China, Hungary, Japan; other evidence concerns the geologically short

Shuttle STS99 mission begins 11 days of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) mapping of 80% of Earth’s land

The two Americans David Raup and Jack Sepkoski, graphing the number of marine animal families over millions of years, discover the 5 great mass extinctions (439, 367, 245, 208, 65 million years ago)

Evidence of the crater in the Yucatan responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs found

The British Antartic Survey reveals the ozone hole with measurements over the past 30 years

Big Island, Hawaii. Kilauea eruption begins. It will continue for 35 years without interruption, to suddenly end in September 2018.

The geologist Walter Alvarez, and the famous quantum physicist Luis Alvarez, publish the article “Extraterrestrial Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction”, or the discovery of the reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs, attributed to the impact of a meteorite, evidence originating from samples found in

George Gaylord Simpson, the most famous paleontologist of this period, publishes an article in which he argues that the extinction of the late Cretaceous (of dinosaurs for example) must be considered a long and continuous process. The same year the geologist Walter Alvarez, and the

A casual conversation between father and son, Luis and Walter Alvarez, a physicist and geologist, leads to the discovery of the KT event or the impact of the Chixulub meteorite 65 million years ago; Walter Alvaresz had in fact discovered a layer of Iridium (of

Geologist Walter Alvarez gets a job in Berkeley, where his father also works, the famous quantum physicist Luis Alvarez, who, in addition to having made a fundamental contribution to the invention of the atomic bomb and particle accelerators, also revealed, through muon detectors, which the

Drilling of the earth’s crust begins in Oklahoma; the hole is called GHK / Lone Star’s Bertha Rogers 1-27 and will reach 9583m before meeting a layer of molten sulfur

George Kukla of Columbia University, studying glacial deposits in Soviet bloc countries, comes to the conclusion, in a letter to President Nixon, that the next ice age could come much sooner than expected, due to the possible slowdown of the Gulf Stream.

Derweze, Turkmenistan (USSR). Soviet geologists while digging an oil can, cause a collapse in the ground with a diameter of about 70m, from which gaseous methane comes out. In an attempt to consume the poison gas, they set it on fire. After half a century

The drilling of the earth’s crust begins on the Kola peninsula; the hole is called Kola SG-3 Zapolyarny and will reach 12262m in 1994, without reaching the Earth’s fluid mantle; however, around 5km of depth, it will encounter a deep layer of fractured rock saturated

Tranquility Base, Sea of

The Theory of Plate Tectonics is born

Congress cancels the Mohole project, which sought to dig, from a boat, a 5000m hole in the thin crust of the Pacific Ocean off Mexico; the depth reached was instead of only 180m (over 4000m of ocean!)

The Royal Society endorses the idea of

Centralia, Pennsylvania. The underground carboniferous field catches fire and burns slowly. After half a century, the fire has not yet been put out and the whole area has been practically abandoned.

Bob Christiansen of the US Geological Survey understands that the entire Yellowstone National Park is the caldera (65km in diameter!) Of a volcano, which feeds on a superplume 200km below, a 72km diameter and thick magma chamber 13Km; the pressure exerted by the magma still

A large impact structure is discovered in Yucatan; it was the Chixulub crater of 65 million years ago, but initially the discovery went completely unnoticed and the thing was rediscovered in 1981 after the Alvarez had already hypothesized a 65 million years old impact somewhere

The American Mohole program (from the name of the Croatian scientist Andrija Mohorovicic, who discovered the existence of the border between the crust and the mantle at about 35Km below Europe) is developed, without success, which, through deep perforations, seeks the beginning of the mantle

Samples of the terrestrial crust of the mid-Atlantic ridge show a progressively greater age as one moves away from the ridge

In Hebgen Lake, near Yellowstone, an entire side of the mountain collapses (80 million tons of rock), 28 campers are killed

In one of his last acts before his death, Albert Einstein writes a short but intense preface to the book “Earth’s Shifting Crust: a Key to some Basic Problems of Earth Science” by Charles Hapgood, in which he harshly criticizes the theory of continental drift.

EC Bullard of Cambridge University, hypothesizes that the differential rotation of the core and the outer part of the planet works like a gigantic electric motor forming the Earth’s magnetic field

The English geologist Arthur Holmes, in the book “Principle of Physical Geology”, is the first to understand that the radioactive decay of the interior of the planet can produce convection

The Danish geologist Inge Lehmann while examining the readings of a seismometer after an earthquake in New Zealand discovers that the Earth’s core is divided into a solid, internal, and a liquid, external, and origin of the Earth’s magnetic field

The Russian-German meteorologist Wladimir Koppen, speculates that the cause of the ice ages is to be found not in hard winters but in cool summers

The British mathematician Harold Jeffreys confirms the hypothesis of the Irish geologist RD Oldham who years earlier had noticed that some shock waves from an earthquake in Guatemala had penetrated the planet to a certain depth and then bounced back to the surface. Jeffreys confirms

The German meteorologist Alfred Wegener realizes that the profiles of Brazil and Africa coincide and concludes that the continents must have moved, and who once was a mega continent that he calls Pangea.

Rock dating with radioactive isotopes

The German meteorologist Alfred Wegner explains the complementarity of the continents on both sides of the Atlantic with the continental drift; is received with extreme skepticism

The Croatian geologist Andrija Mohorovicic while examining the readings of a seismometer after an earthquake in Zagreb, notes that some shock waves have penetrated the planet to a certain (low) depth and then bounce and return to the surface, and thus discovers the existence of

American geologist Frank Bursley Taylor decides to investigate the reason for the similarity of the shape of the coast of South America and Africa

Bertram Boltwood combines information on uranium half-life and uranium lead abundances to estimate the age of the Earth as 2.2 billion years

The Irish geologist RD Oldham while examining the readings of a seismometer after an earthquake in Guatemala, notes that some shock waves have penetrated the planet to a certain depth and then bounce back to the surface, and thus discover the existence of the Earth’s

Lord Kelvin re-calculates the age of planet Earth by also including the (preponderant) heat source due to the decay of the radioactive elements included in it (previously unknown). The new calculation extends the age of the Earth from a few thousand years to several hundred

Scottish physicist James Croll suggests that the mass extinctions that have occurred every 100,000 years are due to the change in the amount of solar radiation due to extraterrestrial causes.

James Croll of Anderson University in Glasgow, in Philosophical Magazine theorizes that variations in the Earth’s orbit may be the cause of ice ages

Humphrey Davy discovers aluminum (the fourth most common element on the earth’s crust)

Louis Agassiz proposes the theory of ice ages

The American John Cleves Symmes proposes the Hollow Earth Theory, namely that the planet is a hollow sphere with 4 concentric spheres inside, with huge holes at the poles of 1400km width. Several expeditions to the poles will be planned in the following decades to

Henry Cavendish determines the land mass: 6.6E24Kg

Scientific geology begins with Hutton’s Theory of the Earth

A meteorite crashes in Albareto, Modena; the object will be fragmented and sold to various collectors and museums; a small fragment the size of a fist is still kept at the Department of Geological Sciences of Modena

Jean Etienne Guettard prepares the first real geological maps

Little Ice Age: 1-2 degrees colder on average worldwide due to decreased solar activity;

Francis Bacon notes that the continents seem to fit together on both sides of the Atlantic; it will take almost 300 years to have an explanation

Global warming episode: there are livestock farms in Greenland and wine grapes are grown in England

For several years, a brief episode of extreme cold has occurred in China, North America and Europe

The current Sahara desertification process ends

The Sahara, in a few centuries, transforms from a prairie with monsoons to a sandy desert (the monsoons have disappeared due to the shift of the perihelion)

The waters of the Mediterranean, following the end of the Wurz glaciation, rise up to overcome the natural barrier of the Bosphorus and enter the fresh water lake represented by the Black Sea basin; the cascade of water continues for about a century and perhaps

Current Sahara desertification process begins

Holocene (Cenozoic period, Quaternary era)

Last glaciation (Wurz), completely finished only after 8000 BC

Short glacial episode known as Younger Dryas

The southern end of the glacier, which covers much of North America, reaches Staten Island (just south of Manhattan). The movement of the ice digs the landscape up to the bedrock, still visible for example in Central Park. The subsequent retreat of the ice will

At the height of the ice age, a huge landslide in the Mediterranean releases immense quantities of methane, probably over 500 million tons, which double the methane in the atmosphere in a very short time causing a sudden greenhouse effect.

Apex of the Wurm Glaciation

Mount Toba volcano eruption in Sumatra; it lasts 6 years and causes an ice age episode that lasts centuries; this event may have brought mankind to the brink of extinction, reducing the entire human population on Earth to a few thousand individuals; this could be

Ends Sangamon Interglacial Period, a period of approximately relative climatic stability, not unlike what we are experiencing now, for the past 12,000 years.

Global warming

Sangamon interglacial period, a period of about relative climatic stability, not unlike what we are experiencing now, for the last 12,000 years.

Wurm glaciation

Global warming

Global warming

Glaciations Riss

Glaciations

Tens of square kilometers of the earth’s crust explode in Yellowstone

Last inversion of the Earth’s magnetic field; previously there had been a magnetic reversal (North to South) every 200,000 years or so

Mindel glaciation

Inversion of the Earth’s magnetic field