Monthly Archives: October 2019

Bite-sized trilobites, starting 540 million years ago, were wandering around the ocean floors surviving and thriving. Dating back to this early fossil-era, the first-ever arthropods of the ancient times have an enthralling story to tell today. The Paleozoic era mariners, once part of the irreplaceable biodiversity in the ocean ecosystem, can now be discovered and unearthed in their fossilized form. Fossil collectors and commoners alike have been beguiled by this three lobed invertebrate seafarer.

Geologic time is the immense span of time that has elapsed since Earth first formed- almost 5.5 billion years ago-to recent times. The geologic time scale is a way of putting Earth’s vast history into an orderly fashion, giving a better perspective of events. At the turn of the nineteenth century, William Smith, an English Canal Engineer, proposed that the lowest rocks in a cliff or quarry are the oldest, while the highest are the youngest.

By observing fossils and rock type in the various layers, it was possible to correlate the rocks at one location with those at other location. These finding along with the first discoveries of dinosaur fossils, led to a framework that scientist still use today to divide Earth’s long history into geologic time scales.