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The Beginnings of the Solar System, Life on Earth and Extinction Events

Page history last edited by Robert W. Maloy 1 month, 1 week ago


This page examines deep history of the earth,

the time between the beginning of the solar system, the origin of the earth 4.5 to 4.6 billion years ago and the emergence of the first humans 200,000 years ago. 


external image Sistema_Solar_12_planetas.png

 

Focus QuestionWhen did life begin on Earth and what were the 5 great extinction events?

 

STS-134 crew patch, International Space Station (ISS)

STS-134 crew patch, International Space Station (ISS)



More on Big Geography at AP World History Key Concept 1.1

 

Early Life on Earth - Animal Origins, from The Smithsonian Institute

 

Extinction Over Time, from The Smithsonian Institute

 

The Smithsonian Institute's Natural History Museum, offers resources for teaching and learning. Lesson plans

classroom resources, and more can be found here

 

Topics on the Page:

 

Big History

 

Beginnings of the Solar System

 

Plate Tectonics and Glaciers
  • Rodinia and Pangaea

 

Extinction Events

 

 

           (A brief History on who Mary Anning Was and why she is important) 

 

The De-Extinction Debate

 

 

 

Big History 


external image 200px-Paperback_book_black_gal.svg.pngA important resource is the book World History: The Big Eras: A Compact History of Humankind for Teachers and Students (available through the National Center for the Schools. The powerpoint overview just below the essay is also helpful in conceptualizing the time period.

 

  • The Big History Project (funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) is the other place to find current pedagogical ideas on big history. The linked site should have some curriculum materials up by the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year.

 

 

Geologic Time Scale from the University of California Museum of Paleontology includes thousands of pages of content on the history of life on earth, with many online, interactive exhibits.

 Back in Time is a wonderful app that presents the history of the universe and the earth (watch a trailer to see the app in action).

 

Eric Idle's Galaxy Song is a fun 2:40 romp through the last several million years. A attention grabbing song for classroom sing alongs.


The Beginnings of the Solar System and the Earth


The path from the start of the universe to the existence of human beings and life on the planet Earth, spans tens of billions of years and unimaginable spaces. Here is a quick look at that complex and varied path.

Expansion of the Universe
Expansion of the Universe


The generally accepted theory on how the universe began is called the Big Bang Theory.

 

The Big Bang Theory

 

     Neil deGrasse Tyson explains The Big Bang Theory with a visual to help explain the crazy phenomenon that started the universe.

    This Source also provides other videos that can help explain this really hard concept.

 

First posited by Georges Lemaitre in 1927, the theory says that all the stuff of the universe is the result of a massive explosion that happened 10 to 20 billion years ago. The theory seeks to explain why the universe is expanding, like ripples in a pool when a rock is dropped in.

Click here to look at the planets from different points of view on NASA'S website.

The Virtual Fossil Museum shows fossils across geologic time and evolution.


external image 200px-Hebrew_timeline.svg.png Visual Timeline of Life on Earth from Cal Poly Humboldt 

History of the Earth in a 24-hour Clock from the website, Flowing Data.

Divisions of Geologic Time is another comprehensive chart of geologic time, from U.S. Geologic Survey

Once in a Million Years: Teaching Geologic Time, from ERIC, provides lesson planning ideas for teaching students the numeracy necessary to comprehend the large numbers used to measure geologic time.

Plate Tectonics and Glaciers


The crust of the earth is divided into dozens of plates of rock which rest on molten magma deep within the earth. These plates "float" on the magma, and often times collide with each other. Plates slip underneath or ride up on top of other plates, causing the continents to drift apart, and creating mountain ranges.

Map Showing Tectonic Plates and Active Volcanoes
Map Showing Tectonic Plates and Active Volcanoes


Along with plate tectonics, glaciers are responsible for the geography of the earth today. Much of North America looks the way that it does because billions of tons of ice once laid on top of it, as far south as New York City. Glaciers are prominent during ice ages, periods of long term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, and have helped shape the history of life on Earth.

Plate Tectonics


Explanation of Plate Tectonics

Information on Glaciers

 

 

Rodinia and Pangaea


Rodinia, the First Supercontinent, 1.1 Billion Years Ago

 

Pangaea 

The Origin of Continents and Oceans (Alfred Wegener) 

 

 


Earth 100 Million Years from Now from YouTube offers a view of how the continents have shifted and will shift over the centuries.

 

 

 

5 Great Extinction Events

external image 200px-MassExtinctionTimeline.svg.png

According to Janet Larsen of the Earth Policy Institute, the 5 great extinction events were:

 

  • Ordovician-Silurian:  440 million years ago, some 85 percent of marine animal species were wiped out in the earth's first known mass extinction.

 

  • Late Devonian:  367 million years ago, many species of fish and 70 percent of marine invertebrates perished in a major extinction event.

 

  • Permian-Triassic:  245 million years ago, up to 95 percent of all animals—nearly the entire animal kingdom—were lost in what is thought to be the worst extinction 

 

  • Triassic-Jurassic:  208 million years ago, another mass extinction took a toll primarily on sea creatures, but also some land animals.

 

  • Cretaceous-Paleogene:  65 million years ago, three quarters of all species—including the dinosaurs—were eliminated. Ice ages followed. Because of the lack of predators, mammals were able to thrive and the new environment.

 

File:Five past mass extinction events—periods.jpg 

 

Eventually, human beings came on the scene a mere 230,000 years ago.


Click here for Timeline of a Mass Extinction from MIT. This article refers to new evidence that a buildup of carbon dioxide may have contributed to mass extinction. There also is evidence of wildfires that may have contributed to global warming, and extinction.

Click here for a SciShow on Mass Extinctions.

 

Prehistoric Worlds | Earth Has Faced Apocalyptic Events Five Times | Documentary

 

Tyrannosaurus rex.  Image by David Monniaux
Tyrannosaurus rex. Image by David Monniaux

 

Scenes from The Lost World, 1925
Scenes from The Lost World, 1925

 

Dinosaurs and Extinction

 

This Video by the Youtube Chanel Kurzgesagt does a minute by minute analysis of the extinction event that killed the dinosaurs 


Impressions from a Lost World, from Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association explores prehistory findings in New England.

Dinosaurs from the American Museum of Natural History, and Dinosaurs from the Natural History Museum in the UK

The Dinosauria Educational website from the University of California - Berkeley featuring information about dinosaurs, their fossil record, their lives, and their taxonomy. 


History Forgot This Rogue Aristocrat Who Discovered Dinosaurs and Died Penniless. Smithsonian Magazine (July 2016)


The Dino Directory, UK Natural History Museum


The De-Extinction Debate

 

Is It Time for De-Extinction?

 


Should We Bring Extinct Species Back to Life?

 

 

De-Extinction: Lost Species Coming Soon to a Wildland Near You? EarthTalk (March 9, 2023)

 

 

 

Links

[3] Quote from David Christian, "What's the Use of Big History?," World History Connected October 2005 <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/whc/3.1/christian.html> (20 Apr. 2011).
[4] http://www.history.com/news/2012/01/26/native-americans-hailed-from-siberian-highlands-dna-reveals/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add Discussion

 

 

 

 

International Big History Association

worldhistoryteacher Apr 26, 2011

 

 

Not appropriate for the page, but the International Big History Association contacted me to join them (out of the blue):

"We are pleased to announce the establishment of the International Big History Association (IBHA) and invite you to consider becoming a member.

Big History is the attempt to understand, in a unified and interdisciplinary way, the history of Cosmos, Earth, Life, and Humanity. The International Big History Association exists to promote the study and teaching of this exciting new scholarly field.

Join us to become a member of the pioneer generation that will turn Big History into a globally-shared investigation. To become a member, please click on the "membership" link on http://ibhanet.org/.

The emerging field of Big History has had many pioneers. Among them are IBHA President David Christian, Vice-President Fred Spier, and Board Members Cynthia Brown and Walter Alvarez. Facilitating contacts among established and new scholars in Big History is a major goal of the IBHA, which promises to stimulate the rapid advancement of this new scholarly field.

One effort to do this is the IBHA conference, planned for August 3 – 5, 2012, at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in Michigan. For more information on this conference with the general theme: "Teaching and Research in Big History: Exploring a New Scholarly Field," please see the conference information at http://ibhanet.org. Paper and panel submissions should be sent to Fred Spier at ibhanet@gmail.com. IBHA board member and GVSU Big History Professor Craig Benjamin is making preparations for hosting the conference.
We are excited about the many other initiatives that are currently underway. For example, IBHA President, David Christian, is leading the Big History Project that will bring the Big History curricula to secondary schools worldwide. David Christian was just introduced by Bill Gates at the TED conference in Long Beach last March, where he gave a spirited presentation, now available in high resolution at http://www.vimeo.com/22243899. Furthermore, IBHA Board Member Barry Rodrigue has produced a Big History Directory which summarizes all the syllabi of the rapidly-increasing number of Big History courses being taught around the world. Barry and Fred Spier have been building an extensive Big History bibliography. These and other resources are available on the IBHA website.

Please consider following the IBHA on:
Twitter ( http://twitter.com/IBHAnet),
visiting our Facebook page ( http://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Big-History-Association/129585663779705),
watching IBHA videos on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/user/IBHAnet),

and posting your responses at the IBHA Blog ( http://ibhanet.blogspot.com/).

Feel very welcome to join us in the IBHA.

Sincerely,
Lowell Gustafson
Secretary
IBHA"

I thought others might be interested.

This looks exciting! And could be a good place for pre-service teachers to get in on the ground floor of a new history movement (with a small bibliography on the specific topic of "Big History")

 

 

 

Although it is still a mystery as to why the Earth’s atmosphere formed in the way it did, the atmosphere’s formation was essential to life forming on our planet.

At first, the atmosphere would not have been able to support life as we know it. It was composed of different amounts of water, carbon dioxide and monoxide, nitrogen, hydrogen, hydrogen chloride and oxygen than it is now. There was very little oxygen, and much larger amounts of other gasses in the air.. Earth was no more than an extremely hot and large rock, that soon split into the Earth and moon . The most important factor, many believe, that contributed to the formation of life on Earth, was water.

According the Big Bang theory, the universe is full of dust, thought to be one of the results of the Big Bang. About 5 billion years ago, a nebula, a cloud of dust and gas, was the start of the solar system. A solar system forms around a star, which is born inside a nebula. Planets are the left-over matter after a start forms. The gravitational pull of a star pulls the planets into orbit around it. Our solar system has eight or nine planets (there is a current dispute on whether Pluto is actually a planet), which are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

 

 

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