Rocks for Frocks - Intro to Geology

Course notes and other items of interest to Bangor Theological Seminary students in this course.

a]me<n a]me<n le<gw u[mi<n o!ti a]gaphtoi> kai> oi| liqoi> kai> ai| pe<trai.
(this will appear in Greek only if you have a Greek font on your computer.)

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The span of geologic time is so vast that we humans have difficulty imagining it. One way to help with this perspective is to create an analogy between event-markers in geologic history and some facet of our own lives or experience which we can comprehend. Below is an example of such an exercise: event-markers in geologic history have been correlated with pages and verses in an Oxford Annotated Revised Standard Version Bible. The procedure is simply to set up a mathematical equation of proportion, with the timing of event-markers divided by the total of geologic time on one side, and "X" (the desired page number) divided by the total number of pages in the Bible used. Successive equations are solved for "X" to produce the table.

Other examples might be to make an analogy between geologic time and a pile of pennies -- each penny representing one million years (or ten million -- in either case, modern human existence would be represented by the raised lettering on one face of a penny, or even less); or a ball of yarn, with one inch = 1 million years, and different colors representing different geologic time periods.

A Geologic Time-Line based on the New Oxford Annotated Bible, by A. Myers

     Event/(Period)                                    Years Ago                            page                               Bible Verse

	     Humans                                         200,000                 1514                  Revelation 22:21,last line

	(Pleistocene)Glaciation                   2 million                    1514                   Revelation 22:20

	           Cretaceous extinction                   66 million                    1511                   Revelation:20:13

(Cretaceous)  Max. Dinosaurs     144 million                    1466                    Hebrews 12:1

          (Jurassic) Birds + Mammals      208 million                    1445                    1 Timothy 6:20

                  (Triassic)                                     245 million                    1433                    1 Thessalonians 1:1

                   (Permian) extinction                   286 million                    1419                    Ephesians 3:18

                         Coal Forests                              320 million                    1408                     2 Corinthians 12:20 

            (Carboniferous) Large Trees    360 million                    1395                     1 Corinthians 15:37

                   (Devonian) Amphibians             408 million                    1379                     Romans 16:27

                   (Silurian)Land Plants                 438 million                     1369                     Romans 8:15

                   (Ordovician)Fish                        505 million                     1347                     Acts 19:37

                    (Cambrian) Major Fossils          538 million                    1336                     Acts 13:1

                   First known 1-celled orgs.      3,300 million                      427                     1 Kings 8:29

                   Origin of Earth                         4,600 million                           1                     Genesis 1:1

Absolute ages from Thompson and Turk, Modern Physical Geology, 1997.

Introduction to Geology