This 30-meter timeline illustrates the history of the Earth since its birth about 4.6 billion years ago. This publication is the final step of a one year production that will have mobilized experts, graphic designers and developers
EXCERPTS:
BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE ANIMATION: Respect the scales!
4.6 billion years is 2 million times our calendar. It's 1500 times older than Lucy's bones. How to represent such a gigantic duration on a scale?
The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) publishes a table which is the international reference for the names and dates of geological periods. This list is regularly updated to take into account recent discoveries. It can be consulted at this address.
However, this table, as precise as it is, is not to scale. The fourth column (Precambrian), which appears shorter than the first three, should actually be 20 times larger.
It seemed pedagogically important to consider a representation closer to real durations.