Transcript File
In The Beginning What was life like? Man Created Gods God of Sun God of lightening God of Thunder God of the oceans The Bible Considered as the oldest book known to man Old testament – 800 – 650 BC Genesis The Biblical Time Scale – widely accepted in17th century James Usher – Arch Bishop of Armagh – did the math – Earth was formed 4004 BC Early Theories Burnett – Sacred Theory of the Earth (1691) Descarts – Dead Star – Noahs flood result of collapse of the originally smooth surface Whiston – New Theory of the Earth (1696) Newton – flood was a result of water resulting from a near miss with a comet Both followed the Biblical Time Scale Fossils began to be acceptable as evidence Buffon – The Dark Abyss of Time The Age of Enlightenment - 18th century Maillet – Telliamed -allowed more time than biblical record Georges Louis Leclerk – Comte de Buffon – Natural History – his calculations related to cooling of molten Earth indicated 70,000 yrs, challenged the biblical timeline Stratigraphy Based on the principal of superposition – new rocks always on top of older rocks Werner – Neptunist Theory – as the great ocean dried – chemicals precipitated out – each becoming a different layer of sedimentary rock.-became labeled as bad science. Stratigraphy did prevail allowing for order to be determined by the way it is layed Fossils Found everywhere – allowed geologists to predict age by comparing to other fossils Cuvier – established the reality of extinction beyond all reasonable doubt Brogniart- established useable guide to establish thesequence of rocks in Paris basin Sequence completed Sedgwick & Roderick – Wales – named the Cambrian & Silurian systems By the 1830's – all knowledgeable geologists agreed – Earths crust was composed of series of deposits, each representing an epoch of geological time John Phillips – 1841 – named the eras of life – Paleozoic, Mesozoic(age of reptiles) and Cenozoic Catastrophism Cuvier – noticed changes in fossils appeared to be sudden Extinction must be due to catastrophic Earth movements and tidal waves Findings include dried mud in caves, unexplainable rocks and boulders all over the land in Europe – must have been a great flood Great Earthquakes & cooling Earth theory Uniformitarianism This model accepted a methodological approach that true science must be based on what can actually be observed Hutton & Lyell – used this beginning in the 1830's This model also requires vast time periods & accepts cyclic model of Earth history Hutton Theory of the Earth Dismissed retreating ocean theory Vulcanism – his theory was that all rocks were formed in essentially the way they are formed today. Converted many Neptunists Went to great lengths to include factors of erosion – wind, rain, flowing streams Lyell L Principles of Geology Attacked catastrophists of wild speculation Named Eocene, Miocene & Pliocene formations Showed that some fossils did not abruptly change A popular writer that influenced the public that the Earth was very old Physics & the age of the Earth Radioactivity discovered in 1896 PierreCurie – 1903 – radioactive elements give off heat Lord Rayleigh – elements are distributed throughout the earth and therefore a substantial amount of heat is generated Radioactive Decay A way to measure geological time Compare proportions of original element and decay present to calculate how old the Earth is. Consensus - 4.5 billion years old