- 4.54billion years of the Earth’s historyDeep Time
- 300,000years of our species’ historySapiens
- 400events200 per timeline
- 1,265references cited
- 305images and illustrations
- 201connections between events
Deep Time and Sapiens
Deep Time, for science classes
Deep Time spans the history of the Earth and of life, from the formation of the planet, 4.54 billion years ago, to the present day.
Open Deep Time →Pages to use in a lesson:
Sapiens, for history classes
Sapiens spans the history of Homo sapiens, from the oldest known fossils of our species, about 300,000 years old, to the present day.
Open Sapiens →Pages to use in a lesson:
Dates, durations and connections
- Dates with their degree of certaintyClicking an event opens its entry. The entry gives the degree of certainty of the date: precise, approximate, given as a range, or debated. It cites the publications the date comes from. When published estimates diverge, a note explains the disagreement.
- Distances proportional to durationsThe scale is linear at every zoom level: distances on screen are proportional to durations. At a glance, students can compare the 66 million years since the extinction of the dinosaurs with the 4.54 billion years of the Earth’s history.
- Events to discover, linked to one anotherOn both timelines, events appear when you zoom in. Clicking an event also draws curved lines, called arcs, to other events. The arcs on the left lead to the events that contributed to it. Those on the right lead to the events it contributed to. More than half of the 400 events have at least one arc.
Methods
In 2019, Cofré and colleagues published a synthesis of 52 studies on how students and teachers understand the nature of science. According to this synthesis, the idea that scientific knowledge can be revised is among the hardest for students to grasp. Genes.media designed the timelines so that a class can discuss this idea. Each date is shown as the result of a measurement or an inference published by researchers. The entry for each event cites at least two scientific publications, which Genes.media found through the PubMed and Consensus search engines. When a new publication changes what is known about an event, Genes.media updates the entry for that event.
Read the Methods pageUsing and citing
You may use Deep Time and Sapiens in teaching and training, including online, without asking for permission. You need only credit Genes.media and give the address of each page you use.
Read the legal notice (in French)Your feedback
Have you used Deep Time or Sapiens in class, linked to them from your course page or shared them with colleagues? Do you have a question, or an idea for an activity or for a feature? Write to Genes.media through its contact form. The form is in French. Messages in English are welcome.
If you find the timelines useful, please tell your colleagues about them, on social media or in the teacher groups you belong to.