2. DEEP TIME
CATASTROPHISM
▸ Baron Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) – founder of vertebrate
paleontology
▸ Repeated catastrophic cataclysms explain extinct animals
and different geologic eras.
▸ Followed by new creations
“All of these facts, consistent among themselves, and
not opposed by any report, seem to me to prove the
existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by
some kind of catastrophe.” Baron Cuvier, 1796.
3. DEEP TIME
UNIFORMITARIANISM
▸ Geological forces the same
today as in the past. They act
gradually and uniformly.
▸ Volcanism, erosion, etc. formed
the surface of the Earth over
long periods of time
▸ No catastrophes (seen partly as
superstition)
4. From the Frontipiece to 1697 English edition of Thomas
Burnet’s Theory of the Earth, opened to an engraved
image of a view of the Earth at the receding of the
waters of the great Deluge described in Genesis 6-9,
showing a tiny Noah’s Ark grounded on Mount Ararat at
the center, and, according to the author’s theory, Earth’s
DEEP TIME
THE AGE OF THE EARTH–
VULCANISM VERSUS NEPTUNISM
▸ Geology and mineralogy related to theological
issues
▸ Biblical account of creation and scienti
fi
c
evidence
▸ Not clear line of science vs. religion but
different theologies and different scienti
fi
c
theories
▸ Neptunism:
▸ Most rocks are the sedimentation of primordial
waters
▸ Vulcanism (or Plutonism):
▸ Rocks are the result of
fi
re acting on matter
5. DEEP TIME
THE AGE OF THE EARTH–
VULCANISM VERSUS NEPTUNISM
▸ Geology and mineralogy related to theological
issues
▸ Biblical account of creation and scienti
fi
c
evidence
▸ Not clear line of science vs. religion but
different theologies and different scienti
fi
c
theories
▸ Neptunism:
▸ Most rocks are the sedimentation of primordial
waters
▸ Vulcanism (or Plutonism):
▸ Rocks are the result of
fi
re acting on matter An illustration concerning the composition of the crust
in the Paris basin, from Cuvier’s and Brongniart’s study.
Source: https://explorer.aapg.org/story/articleid/49525/catastrophism-and-the-historical-roots-
6. DEEP TIME
THE HISTORY OF THE EARTH –
CATASTROPHISM VS. UNIFORMITARIANISM
Catastrophism:
‣ Earth shaped
through a series of
catastrophic events
‣ James Hutton
‣ George Cuvier
Uniformitarianism:
‣ Earth shaped in
long lasting,
gradualprocesses
‣ Charles Lyell
‣ Charles Darwin
7. DEEP TIME
TELLIAMED
‣ An early view that the world was old was by a
French diplomat and author, Benoît de Maillet
‣ Used the device of a Hindu wise man
recounting to a missionary that the earth was 2
billion years old
‣ And that life arose in the sea
‣ And humans arose from marine life forms
8. DEEP TIME
DEEP TIME
▸ Idea of Deep Time emerges in the 19th century with
Hutton, Lyell and others.
▸ Coined by John McPhee in his book Basin and Range
(1981), one of several of his works about geology and
geologists.
"Numbers do not seem to work well with regard to
deep time. Any number above a couple of
thousand years—
fi
fty thousand,
fi
fty million—will
with nearly equal effect awe the imagination."
“Consider the earth’s history as the old measure of
the English yard, the distance from the king’s nose
to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a
nail
fi
le on his middle
fi
nger erases human history.”
18. Image: Karen Carr
Images : http://www.courses.vcu.edu/PHY-rhg/Discovery/06-AsteroidNotesObsservations.html
K-T, from the German
initials for Cretaceous
Tertiary, Now known
as the Cretaceous–
Paleogene boundary
19. DEEP TIME
ALVAREZ HYPOTHESIS
▸ Geologist Walter Alvarez and his
father, Nobel prize physicist Luis
Alvarez with chemists Frank
Asaro and Helen Vaughn Michel
▸ Clay Layer at K/T boundary
contains 30 times the amount of
Iridium normally present on
Earth
▸ Asteroid Impact – at least 10 km
diameter impactor
21. DEEP TIME
CHICXULUB CRATER
▸ Massive blast – a billion times more powerful than Hiroshima
▸ 180km in diameter and 20km in depth
▸ Earthquakes,
fi
restorms, tsunamis
▸ Followed by ‘Nuclear Winter’ which wiped out ¾ of animal life and most
marine plankton
Source: atlasobscura.com
22. Gravity anomaly map of the Chicxulub impact structure (from Wikimedia Commons)
26. DEEP TIME
DECCAN TRAPS
Photo: Gerta Keller Credit: Gerta Keller, NSF
Gerta Keller argues that volcanic activity from the Deccan Traps in India, not
an impact, led to the mass extinction.
27. DEEP TIME
A ONE-TWO PUNCH?
▸ Recently, a Berkeley team, led
by Mark Richards, published a
report online in The Geological
Society of America Bulletin
▸ Argue that the impact ‘rang the
earth like a bell’ leading to
massive eruptions, including
those in India
▸ Impact probably triggered
world-wide earthquake of
magnitude 9 or greater- now
shown to be suf
fi
cient to trigger
eruptions
29. DEEP TIME
A 6TH EXTINCTION?
▸ The 6th Extinction
▸ Also known as the Holocene or
Anthropocene extinction
▸ Ongoing mass extinction of species,
caused by human actions
▸ Title of a popular book by science writer
Elizabeth Kolbert (2014)
